Microsoft wants to eat Linux's lunch ... but it's not in the bag

Besides its current play to remain king of the desktop with Vista, Microsoft is quietly (or not so much, depending on your definition of "quietly" -- see the fake newspaper above) making a case for Windows Server over Linux for delivering Web pages, running databases and the like. Check out this Microsoft page, peppered with testimonials and full "case studies" from entities that found Linux hard to manage and, as a result, turned from Linux back to the boys and girls of Redmond.

Here are a couple of quotes:

"Many people underestimate how complex a Linux cluster is to set up and manage. After that, it’s a long learning curve just to be able to use it."

— David Dai, Computer Science PhD Student, Advanced Research Institute Virginia Tech

"One of our scientific programmers had to spend a large portion of his time being ‘the Linux guy.’ Now he can focus on creating chemistry applications instead of on cluster maintenance."

— Matt Wortman, Genome Research Institute, University of Cincinnati

Funny, it is, that the "case studies" are downloadable ... in Microsoft Word format. Glad I have Open Office (and now Abiword) so I can read the damn thing.

Here's a bit of the case study on Continental AG:

IT experts at Continental AG first tested the options of a Linux platform. Supported by Sun, Continental had also evaluated StarOffice. According to Rölz, however, using a Linux/open-source solution would have necessitated an “unmanageable migration expense,” especially because individual Microsoft Office documents and solutions would not have been convertible. Moreover, a series of important applications that run exclusively on Microsoft software would have made it necessary to run virtualization software on a Citrix application server in the background of any new Linux platform.

So ... they clearly haven't heard of Open Office. If they do have a number of "important applications" that only run in Windows, I'll give them that one, but ... what ... exactly ... are ... those "important apps"? In-house hacks, or commericially available programs for which Linux-compatible equivalents could be found?

Then:

Continental chose a uniform client-server infrastructure based on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system (for its server computers) and the Windows® XP Professional operating system (for workstations and portable computers). The company decided to equip each client computer with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

They bought the whole shebangy --- the Server software, plus XP and Office for all desktops.

By way of explanation:

“We were especially concerned about Microsoft Excel macros and Microsoft Access databases that had been developed over the years by many employees at different sites and that over time had evolved into important tools without anyone’s noticing,” reports Dr. Bernd Thomas, Manager of Corporate IT Infrastructure at Continental AG.

What can you do? I'm not an Excel guy, so I don't know how Excel macros migrate over to Open Office's spreadsheet, or Gnumeric, for that matter. But did they test this? Did they try to migrate some of these files over to even the Windows version of Open Office to see how they run?

If you're married to Microsoft Office, I can't tell you to change. And if you're a big, moneyed corporation like Continental AG, I guess price is, if not "no object," at least not as much of an object as it is here, at the Daily News, where we run XP, but no other Microsoft apps. And our main editorial software from the Unisys company runs on Windows and Mac (although we don't run it on OS X), and I believe also will run on Linux (but I'll have to check that one) -- it's very platform-independent, as far as that goes. We all have Open Office, and nobody has complained that it's not as good as Word. I know OO isn't as good as MS Office, but it's plenty good enough -- and free, with no looming, expensive upgrades down the road.

There's been plenty of talk lately about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop. In a touch of irony, I think it's not ready for the casual home user -- it's still in the realm of hobbyist types, even though reatailers such as Wal-Mart are offering Linspire-equipped boxes to consumers.

On the business desktop, I think Linux has an even better chance. After all, when cost is king, Linux can offer a better deal ... out of the box, as it were. If the choice of hardware and OS is based on applications -- and with many business applications becoming Web-based (such as the way I'm writing this blog in Movable Type), it doesn't matter whether the box is running Windows, Linux or Mac OS -- all that matters is whether or not it has a Web browser and some kind of office suite when needed. The temptation to save $200 a box on the OS and somewhere between $300 and $600 on suite software -- and even more on antivirus and related security products -- is powerful indeed. And if the IT people in charge are committed to making Linux work with the hardware chosen, a savings of $800 to $1000 per workstation on software costs, multiplied by hundreds or thousands of PCs, becomes very real money indeed. That's where Linux has its "in," from the cubicle to the shop floor and beyond.

I'm not coming at this as a Microsoft hater -- I use XP every day, and my experience has been very, very good. But I am not using any MS apps, simply because my employer didn't want to pay for them. A wise choice, because our need for that functionality is secondary -- and ably satisfied with Open Office. I even applaud the decision not to purchase Photoshop for everybody. Sure, the photo-department pros have it on their Macs, but for the rest of us, who are pretty much just shrinking and cropping JPGs for the Web, the GIMP is more than sufficient. In fact, I'd like a program with fewer features that loads faster, but nothing else out there will do the job. The best I've found is IrfanView, which is a great photo viewer and pretty good image manipulator -- just not as good as the GIMP.

But since both programs are free, I was able to test them on actual work before I committed to learning one or the other -- and I tested those two and many more.

I applaud the many programmers out there who are offering their work either as shareware or in time-limited trial versions, with a nominal fee due if you continue to use the program. That way, you can decide if it's valuable enough to merit continued use. Codeweavers, the grown-up version of Wine emulation for Linux, and Parallels, which enables Windows and Linux programs to run on OS X are two such programs that allow you to try before you buy -- and which don't cost an arm and a leg if you do decide to pay up. Add to that EditPad, which is free for non-commercial use, and available in a commercial version for $49.99. So between free and $100 per app, there are many ways to get stuff done with a computer.

OK, I realize I'm totally off-track, but another school of thought says that Vista's late and incomplete arrival, coupled with the impending release of the new version of OS X will make things very, very dicey for Microsoft. And if even one of the current or even future Linux distributions steps up and brings true ease of use when it comes to installation, automatic hardware configuration and software management, the whole business of operating systems could shift. (And at this point, that distro is Ubuntu, especially after its alliance with Linspire and impending use of the latters's CNR click-and-run software installation system.)

And remember, there's money to be made with Linux, especially when it comes to support. Ubuntu's parent, Canonical is doing it, and even HP is making good money propping up Linux, bringing in $25 million in fiscal 2006 alone.

See -- when you don't own the OS, you follow the money. And when you're an IT consumer at the business level, you seek savings and relative sanity. So, workers of America, your next PC just might be running Linux; and remember, it's a money thing.