[NBLUG/talk] Linux in offices initiative

[Steve S.]

Agreed on all points, Jordan!

I'll just add one more point, and expand one...

You wrote, "My clients know that I am the one that
supports their network, and that is their bottom line."
I'd expand that to the notion that clients want an
array of options for support; not to say they aren't
happy with whatever provider they've got, but most
businesses like to know that there's always a backup;
other providers who can step into the breach if their
current provider goes out of business, larger providers
who can service out-of-area if they expand, etc etc etc.

There's pretty-much always another shop with more
MS techs, anywhere they look.  Not so much for Linux,
so it can take a bit of extra "selling" to show them that
the downsides are more apparent than real, and the
upsides are very real indeed.

This veers back toward the OP's point about NBLUG
discussing "best practices,"  If we all had the same
few core distro's we preferred, the same few solutions
to each of the substantive business-challenges (and
if the Linux world outside the NorthBay agreed with
our selections) then the linux choice would be much
easier for businesses to make...



You also called out the MS "ecosystem," by which I think
you meant the self-sufficient all-MS-product office, without
need for any non-MS product running on their hardware &
working without putting effort into "compatibility" between
two different software packages.

The other issue I see is a b2b-level compatibility.  Most
businesses want 100% compatibility with whatever their
customers/clients/vendors/regulators/partners/etc use.
When they send out a document, they need to know that
the recipient will see exactly what they saw; when they
open a document from elsewhere, they want to be sure
they're seeing it exactly as-written.  In my wife's office, for
example, there's a problem even with different versions of
MS-Word (MS-Win vs OS X), which occasionally display
somewhat differently.  OOo (which they've seen & used)
is a complete non-starter because it is so very different in
its output.

That's not to say that you cannot produce the same look
via OOo; but that sometimes a given document needs to
be tweaked to get there, and THAT is a no-go.


- Steve S.

-- 
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of
childishness and the desire to be very grown up."      -CS Lewis