Giving up on Microsoft software for work - 18 months on

By Nick Hortovanyi

Its been 18 months or so, since I started on "Giving up on Microsoft software for work". It has been an interesting adventure, one fraught with skepticism from some, but with joy from myself. The big question I faced then was, "Was it possible to work without using Microsoft software?". The answer has been a profound "Yes", from a pure do things to get work done point of view, but "No" from getting billable work.

I'm still using a nice 17" Mac Book Pro and have been very impressed with it. During the time I've had it, a new version of Mac OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard, has been released and the system is still performing fine with the hardware. I've had next to no trouble and everything is working great. Apple have even opened retail stores here in Australia.

This photo is from my recent Sydney trip (the store was extremely busy inside):

Our servers run linux of various flavours - SuSE Linux, RedHat and Ubuntu. Some are on-premise and some are off-premise on Amazon EC2. Email, calender, documents use Google Docs and our CRM is Salesforce.com. Its our intent, that unless it is a client end user machine, that as existing hardware reaches end-of-life, new hardware will not be purchased. However, cloud infrastructure will be utilised.

What has surprised me immensely, during this time, is even though we use no Microsoft software, how dominant it is on-premise. Even with the ill fated Microsoft Vista operating system, corporates aren't moving away from Microsoft in the vast majority of environments that I'm engaged with in my local state of South Australia. Sure there are a few linux servers but they appear to be the exception to the rule. Why?

Lets look at servers quickly. Why isn't linux deployed more often? The two main reasons appear to be that existing support contracts with the outsourcer doesn't allow it (well change the contract is my normal response) and secondly that there aren't enough trained administrators (it doesn't take long to train them). But its more then what I have just mentioned, its also somewhat religious. Its like a fraternity, an old school boys club to some degree, with the managers choosing the technology based on relationships and maybe not on technical merit to get the job done in an efficient & cost effective means. A large outsourcer here in Adelaide (anybody living here will know that it is HP Enterprise Services, formerly EDS) seem to promote Microsoft at the exclusion of Linux. Is this to keep others such as IBM out? Who knows!

Choosing Microsoft as the operating system on the server, invariable also means that only Microsoft development languages and tools will be used.

Lets look on the client. The desktops are running Windows 2003/XP etc in these corporates environments. There may be a few Macs, but they will be with marcomms people, if they have these in house. Whats surprising though, is that mobile devices, will be a mixture of different vendors, including Apple's iPhone. The iPhone is appearing in the hands of many executive managers.

What I have not looked into, in great detail, is besides Microsoft Office, what are the applications that are running on these desktops? Are they installed natively, are they supplied through a Citrix server or are they web based? The later, is how the majority of applications, that I interact with, have been deployed in recent years. They work in most of the popular browsers, independent of anyone type of desktop. Invariably, they will also have a desktop version that works on Mac, Windows or Linux desktops.

So what is going on with the desktop in these corporates? (Oh, I don't use Microsoft Office either and can write documents, do spreadsheets and prepare/present presentations.)

How old are these applications that only work on Microsoft desktops? Do they still satisfy the business requirements? Has the initial investment been written off? Why aren't they being modernised and turned into web based applications? Are the users complaining that they are unproductive because of the outdated interface?

Some interesting questions. To me if they aren't being asked, or when people ask them, they are being squashed. It suggests that the organisation is stuck in support mode, looking to preserve the status quo. Those that can drive the change, to innovate, to progress forward to the next paradigm will get frustrated and leave.

This is what happens with myself, when people say the solution has to be Microsoft based and linux, or other alternatives can't be considered. To me it is yesterday's thinking.

So even though, I myself have been very successful in giving up on Microsoft software for work, from an acquiring work perspective from potential prospects in my current geography, it is not presently a positive.

"When will it change?" is the question I've been asking myself a lot lately.

The worth of content

By Nick Hortovanyi

'The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content,' Murdoch says.

These are some interesting words, which I found from a Slashdot article, titled "Rupert Murdoch Says Google is Stealing His Content".

Two and a half years ago I wrote a blog entry, "What is Content?" and in that I said "Who controls our content, controls the knowledge that is represented to us. The channels of delivery holds worth that is higher then the cost of the content itself; but the channel itself has no worth without content.".

I believe what we are seeing now is the channel of delivery that controls more formal content exerting it's influence. The worth of the content, when it is not used directly to generate advertising revenue, will be interesting to see and to discover, as these current, being instigated by Murdoch, events unfold.

Google Wave - could be the end of the email inbox

By Nick Hortovanyi

I started watching the Google I/O Keynote yesterday, and thought this is going to eat up nearly an hour and an half of my time, so I put it on the back burner.

Off I went reading my blogs and others sites. Eventually I came across an article written by Mary-Jo Foley - "With Wave, did Google jump the (Microsoft) shark?".  Now if Microsoft commentators, were on the bandwagon, shooting down a developer preview, something really interesting must be happening. Today, I found an excellent write up over at Tech Crunch - "Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For a New Web.". I had to put away some time to watch the YouTube video.

This Google Wave Developer Preview presentation at Google I/O blew me away.

From a technical perspective it shows the power of browser applications, especially those using the newer features of HTML5 (this would appear to be the start of more to come). More importantly it is integrating the various streams of communications (email, twitter, IM, wiki etc) into a consistent interface. As information is updated on one screen, all participants in the "wave" see the update, which unlike email happens in real time.

The technology is going to be open sourced, using a published protocol - info can be found here for the Google Wave Federation Protocol with Google Code hosting APIs and samples.

This is the best example of a user friendly Lifestreaming tool that I've seen. Its worth the time to watch the YouTube video.

Google apps for your domain - practicing what I teach

By Nick Hortovanyi

For a while we have been running our own email server with a postfix setup using google apps for your domain (GAFYD) for calendar services. I'd setup GAFYD under a different domain from toasttechnology.com (yes, it was a little untidy) and also wanted to integrate everything in salesforce.com with a complete integrated move to the cloud.

It didn't take very long at all to create a new toasttechnology.com GAFYD setup including updating the DNS entry per google's instructions.  If you do it yourself, watch out for the first couple of days, as some emails may still arrive at your previous email server's IP address. It was also easy to integrate google apps with salesforce.com. Now I can send an email directly inside of salesforce.com through gmail and have it recorded against the appropriate contact.

I should of done this ages ago, as now I'm using IMAP so it doesn't matter from where I view an email or from where I send it. All devices including my iPod touch are updated. As I've made the move, and haven't had any troubles, I'm confident now to recommend it to others.

In my mind I really don't understand why most organisations are still hosting their own email servers. If SLAs and 25GB email inboxes are a most then use the Google Apps for business professional version.

Google apps for your domain - practicing what I teach

By Nick Hortovanyi

For a while we have been running our own email server with a postfix setup using google apps for your domain (GAFYD) for calendar services. I'd setup GAFYD under a different domain from toasttechnology.com (yes, it was a little untidy) and also wanted to integrate everything in salesforce.com with a complete integrated move to the cloud.

It didn't take very long at all to create a new toasttechnology.com GAFYD setup including updating the DNS entry per google's instructions.  If you do it yourself, watch out for the first couple of days, as some emails may still arrive at your previous email server's IP address. It was also easy to integrate google apps with salesforce.com. Now I can send an email directly inside of salesforce.com through gmail and have it recorded against the appropriate contact.

I should of done this ages ago, as now I'm using IMAP so it doesn't matter from where I view an email or from where I send it. All devices including my iPod touch are updated. As I've made the move, and haven't had any troubles, I'm confident now to recommend it to others.

In my mind I really don't understand why most organisations are still hosting their own email servers. If SLAs and 25GB email inboxes are a most then use the Google Apps for business professional version.