[ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Mission Statement / Business Model

[Matthew Brown]

This is a very interesting line of reasoning.  Incidentally, I just had
a second meeting yesterday with a mid-sized company that is looking to
migrate their apps infrastructure to Linux.  We've done an awful lot of
M$ development with them, and I've been opening discussions with them
for a while on the Linux front.  For me, this is definite market
validation for the Open Source business model.

On Sat, 2002-02-09 at 11:15, jeff hubbs wrote:
> 
> > FWIW: some of my more computer-savvy clients have been asking about 
> > converting to Linux, without me mentioning the subject. Some people DO read 
> > the news.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Irv
> 
> I have been wondering if this has been happening in reality.  It sure 
> seems like a question that SHOULD be being asked by anyone who wonders 
> if they really need to be spending all that money.
> 
> Sorry I didn't make the meeting; I will try to make the next one.
> 
> A capability that I personally want to develop involves the creation of 
> business-type IT resources utilizing older PC systems (for the sake of 
> discussion, I'll call "old" anything that predates the PIII).  Several 
> things drive me in this direction.
> 
> For one, even though I am not a rabid tree-hugger, it bothers me that MS 
> OSses and software seem to drive a cycle of diesktop hardware upgrading 
> that is resource- and money-wasteful.  I've almost gotten to the point 
> where I feel like a PIII on every desk in most office situations is 
> egregiously wasteful.
> 
> A little principle I "invented" (I put that in quotes because I don't 
> think I could possibly be the only person who came up with it) when I 
> worked for teh US Department of Energy is that of "returned value."  A 
> desktop PC costs a certain amount of money X.  To get X in returned 
> value, tha machine needs to be 1) on all the time 2) busying its CPU(s) 
> at 100% doing gainful work 3) have its drive be about 75-80% full for a 
> good reason with a lot of I/O going on 4) have plenty of network traffic 
> going on.  Oh, and the machine must run until it breaks.  To the extent 
> that those characteristics aren't being met, you've got some 
> semi-arbitrary reduction down from X in returned value.
> 
> It shouldn't be too hard to imagine that in most cases, given that MOST 
> computer hardware is desktop hardware, companies get ludricously low 
> amounts of returned value for their financial outlay for IT. 
> Furthermore, what I'm saying runs counter to how bean-counters handle 
> computing resources (w.r.t. depreciation, etc.); in fact, it says that 
> what bean-counters do is flat-out wrong-headed.
> 
> Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that when developing IT 
> resources for an organization, something needs to be done to preserve 
> and/or maximize returned value.  This means that if a company presents 
> an office full of perfectly functional desktop machines that happen to 
> be P90s, then a solution that calls for the replacement of the P90s with 
> 1.5GHz P4s or what have you is no solution at all, even if you could get 
> the cost of the new machines very low.
> 
> Acknlowledging that StarOffice on a P90 is probably not pleasant, 
> thoughts must turn to remote execution and treating the desktop machine 
> like an X terminal, perhaps going so far as to eliminate disk drives at 
> the desktop altogether.  If you can achieve this, you wind up 
> trivializing the desktop hardware, making it highly interchangeable and 
> disposable.    Thoughts turn to making very cost-effective and robust 
> file servers and application servers.
> 
> So, if this "cooperative" wants to offer something that would really 
> impress the typical business owner, come up with a pre-engineered 
> solution that primarily utilizes existing hardware of most any age and 
> covers 90% of the company's IT activity right out of the box.  I think 
> that among all of us, we can probably agree on what the final result 
> should look like and make it so that it can be ported to all kinds of 
> hardware.  Companies that utilize this shouldn't expect to get away with 
> paying nothing for hardware - if there isn't a decent server with 
> hot-swappable disk drives, then one has to be bought or built - but, my 
> gosh, compared to the money that companies are paying now for the pretty 
> boxes from Dell, etc. and the MS tax, how bad can that be?
> 
> - Jeff
> 
> 
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-- 
Best regards,

-Matthew Brown
CorData
Phone: (770) 795-0089
Fax:   (404) 806-4855
Web:   www.cordata.net


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