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Windows Operating Systems Software BSD IT

Windows Drives Company To OpenBSD 476

Posted by Zonk from the geek-squad-can't-help dept.
Barry Lyndon writes "Computerworld reports that the nightmare of windows is driving PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's largest accountancy and business consulting companies, to OpenBSD and open source in general." From the article: "'My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money.' When asked what argument he used to convince management to use an open source solution, Uemura said: 'They didn't have an argument because they said don't spend any money.' 'They trusted me,' he said. 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.' Uemura said a lot of work was done 'behind the scenes'. 'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said."
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Windows Drives Company To OpenBSD More

Windows Drives Company To OpenBSD

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  • Hurray!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by middlemen ( 765373 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @01:59PM (#13873415)
    Hurray!! BSD is alive and kicking again!!

  • Wondering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Soporific ( 595477 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:01PM (#13873428)
    Even if the software is free it seems to me that the most expensive thing is always the developers, training, implementation, etc.

    ~S

    • Re:Wondering (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:05PM (#13873471) Journal
      If you've already have a tech-staff thats large enough they can often train themselves. Using your existing assets

      • Re:Wondering (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:10PM (#13873508)
        And if they can't train themselves, then get rid of their sorry asses. Let's be honest, with the wealth of easily accessible documentation out there, there's no excuse for any somewhat competent IT person to not be able to pick up OpenBSD. Since any decent person in the field would also have ample amounts of UNIX and Linux background, OpenBSD should be a relatively minor change for them. If they still can't pick it up, then they just shouldn't be in the IT field.

        • Now now... study after study has proven that continuing employee training not only boosts employee know-how, but also employee morale, motivation, efficiency, innovation, and tenure. It also keeps employees on top of their game, better preparing the company as a whole for the inevitable business methodology changes that come with doing business.

        • Re:Wondering (Score:3, Informative)

          by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )
          Let's be honest, with the wealth of easily accessible documentation out there, there's no excuse for any somewhat competent IT person to not be able to pick up OpenBSD.

          Windows support is now a blue collar occupation. Its a trade, not a profession. To manage UNIX they will either have to have had prior exposure to it at work, or they got taught it at college.

          My brother started out as a cook, then as an operator on a large IBM site. Now he does windows support. I guarantee that he will never get unix. He co

      • The existing tech staff were running the whole thing on one Domain Controller. My *home* network has two.
    • No the most expensive thing is having your company dragged around by the nose with implementations that only half work. How much does it cost when a server goes down? If your people can't learn to use different tools then they are useless whether your business is brick laying, machining or building networks.

    • Re:Wondering (Score:4, Insightful)

      by greg_barton ( 5551 ) <greg_barton@yaho ... minus herbivore> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:13PM (#13873541) Homepage Journal
      Even if the software is free it seems to me that the most expensive thing is always the developers...

      Yes, and just imagine all of those expensive developers sitting idle because a bug in the proprietary software they use prevents them from doing their job. If they were using open source software, at least they could try to fix it...

      • Re:Wondering (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RetroGeek ( 206522 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:43PM (#13873807) Homepage
        If they were using open source software, at least they could try to fix it...

        Yes, because every developer is conversant with C, and knows how to code kernels. And of course the code is self-documenting so it does not take a long time to figure out what the code is supposed to do. And of course there will not be un-intended effects in others parts of the code. And you already have regression testing set up before you start making changes?

        Maintenance coding is NOT simple.

        • Re:Wondering (Score:3, Insightful)

          by greg_barton ( 5551 )
          Yes, because every developer is conversant with C, and knows how to code kernels.

          Well, if you've got a project that requires changes to the kernel...maybe you should have some developers who can hack it...maybe?

          Maintenance coding is NOT simple.

          Yet it's a step up from impossible, which can be the difficulty of getting a bugfix from some vendors.

        • Re:Wondering (Score:3, Informative)

          by AJWM ( 19027 )
          More often than not, the advantage to having the source of the API (lib or OS) that your application is calling is not so that you can fix a bug in that lib or OS, but so that you can see how the API really works rather than how it is documented to work. Quite frequently documentation is wrong, or out of date, or omits certain assumptions the API developer made about the apps that would be calling it.

          I've fixed many a misbehaving application because I could see where invoked code differed from its design

    • Re:Wondering (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dsginter ( 104154 )
      Even if the software is free it seems to me that the most expensive thing is always the developers, training, implementation, etc.

      Exactly... here's an easy way to largely eliminate Windows Server:

      1) Build an open source LDAP directory controller that can be installed on any box (i.e. - Windows workstation, Linux, *BSD, et cetera)
      2) Build management tools for that directory implementation
      3) Finish it (i.e. - polish, usability, et cetera)
      4) Give it away for free

      Certainly, there's all this stuff in the open so

      • Re:Wondering (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ath ( 643782 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:47PM (#13873842)
        You can completely run eDirectory with Zenworks (to manage group policies) on a Windows server. You can also use Windows clients without any Novell client software if you activate CIFS on the server (Netware or Open Enterprise Server with the Linux kernel).

        There is no need to run the Novell client anymore. We run Netware servers all over the world and no one uses the Novell client to connect to the services on them. They have iPrint, iFolder, and the Zen gina for connecting to a middletier server that is used to push applications and manage workstations. None of that is needed, but it makes the client management relatively painless.

        It seems that, with the miniscule pricing of eDirectory, there is not much incentive to develop and manage a separate bundle of LDAP services and tools. The problem often comes back to ignorance from the market, who do not realize the current offerings from Novell. Instead, the discussions is always about Novell products circa 1995, about the same year that Apple was going out of business.

    • Should have training/education expenses figured in as a yearly cost. For something like this, IT staff don't get to go on Linux pub crawl this year.
    • Even if the software is free it seems to me that the most expensive thing is always the developers, training, implementation, etc

      Buggy software that affects your entire company will cost you much more in downtime, missed due dates, frustration, hatred of IT and quality of life. From the article:

      Then PWC was hit with a virus affecting network traffic and the Checkpoint firewall was running at 100 percent CPU capacity which was effectively a denial of service. "So we had to put an OpenBSD firewall in fron

  • Don't know about that... (Score:5, Funny)

    by N1ghtFalcon ( 884555 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:03PM (#13873449)
    My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later

    - Famous last words?
    • Yea right. If something get's screwed up, then you lose your job for "not asking". At least if you asked you can say "hey you guys approved it." Luckily he didn't screw up (and even guru's can screw up)

      • Re:Don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bogado ( 25959 ) <bogado.bogado@net> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:54PM (#13873906) Homepage Journal
        That is the problem with big corporations, no one wants to put their asses on the line. You have a solution, you ask for your boss to aprove, he don't want to put his ass on the line and ask the superior, and this goes on and on until someone simply says "no" or it gets to the CEO. Corporations buy from MS because they can, on the theory, blame them for problems.

        I believe that this man had balls, and he solved the problem that his predessor could not solve (and probably got fired). He puted his ass on the line, if he had failed he would probably be fired. But he did not, he had confience that this would solve the problem and he did.

        Im getting tired of this days that anyone is trying to point fingers to everyone else, for problems that are probably their. And this is happening all over, from the crusade against video games to the xxiaa with their crusade against their customers.

      • Re:Don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hazem ( 472289 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:05PM (#13874019) Journal
        Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

        The safe thing to do is ask. When you're told "no" or given the indefinite "we'll think about it", you're stuck.

        But, if you're sure of yourself and know you can do it - then give it a try. Sure, you might fail, and lose your job, but that's a risk.

        In studying succesful people and organizations, the one thing that seems to stand out is that none of them ever did things "the way they're supposed to", and they tended to put everything on the line for a shot at success. Sure, they sometimes fail, but they keep trying, and they are willing to risk everything.

        There's a poster on a wall here, in a building named after the athelete who said it that sums it up pretty well:

        I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
        I've lost almost 300 games.
        26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.
        I've failed over and over and over again in my life.
        And that is why I succeed.

        Playing it safe gets you a steady paycheck and a steady job. Taking risks may get you burned, but it may also lead to great success.
    • Yes, as many managers will not hesitate to fire your insubordinate ass. Something had to be done to stop the threat to their authority, so the managers, having no choice will just have to do it.

    • Re:Don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mgpeter ( 132079 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:13PM (#13873536) Homepage
      - Famous last words?

      Most of the time the people higher up have no idea reguards to technology. I have been in the situation where something had to be done to either get off of an NT Server solution, or to re-implement a Windows Network that was drowning fast. In every situation I deployed a Samba/GNU/Linux solution and no one actually cared as long as it worked - and they always work better than any MS Solution (IMO)

      The only place that actually asked, I gave them 2 quotes, one with a $8500.00 price tag for the server software alone, and one of $4500.00 which included a Dell PowerEdge 2800 w/6 SCSI drives....Guess which one they chose.

  • PWC has a interesting attitude (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joelparker ( 586428 ) <joel@school.net> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:03PM (#13873454) Homepage
    BSD is free and great but there's still costs for retraining, reconfiguring, and ferreting out things that don't quite work the same way as in a Windows environment. Good luck, PWC, and please share your results about this switch!

    • Sure, but(!) (Score:2, Informative)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      PWC has a interesting attitude...
      br>BSD is free and great but there's still costs for retraining, reconfiguring, and ferreting out things that don't quite work the same way as in a Windows environment. Good luck, PWC, and please share your results about this switch!

      Sure, but you do this with Windows every two years anyway, right?

      It appears PWC is after stability, not just the software humming along smoothly, but controlling their upgrade path rather than leaving that in the hands of the goofballs in R

  • It's just one of their offices... (Score:4, Informative)

    by JoostSchuttelaar ( 863737 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:04PM (#13873456)
    ... not the entire company. That would've been big news. Still good though :)

  • Umm....What?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by -Grover ( 105474 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:04PM (#13873457)
    From TFA:

    IT managers who want to deploy an open source solution but are worried about company politics should go ahead and do it without asking, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan IT manager Mark Uemura.


          That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea. Just come in one weekend and change the entire network over to BSD without running it by anyone. Why bother with the pesky work of drawing up a well-structured arguement for what you want, and then run it by the people who sign your check? That would be highly irrational IMO...Screw politics, they'll thank you when it's done - With a nice pink check.

    • Perhaps he was misquoted? Indeed, any decent IT manager would understand that it is necessary to plan ahead. Coming up with proposals, performing various cost/benefit analyses, and discussing with other IT people will often lead to many potential problems being dealt with early.

    • That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea. Just come in one weekend and change the entire network

      That's what I did and do all the time. The user shouldn't recognize the migration, but after a while they realize that the service availability, perfomance and security is so much better. It just takes a while to prepare the final step (switch over).

    • Re:Umm....What?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:49PM (#13873859) Homepage Journal
      That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea. Just come in one weekend and change the entire network over to BSD without running it by anyone. Why bother with the pesky work of drawing up a well-structured arguement for what you want, and then run it by the people who sign your check?

      Well, that's the plus side of being in a culture that still believes in personal responsibility. The downside is coming into work on Monday and being handed a katana with the understanding you will "do the honorable thing."

      • Almost... (Score:4, Informative)

        by shis-ka-bob ( 595298 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @04:42PM (#13875069)
        Katanas are used to cut others. The wakizashi is used for Seppuku,as well as cutting others that get too close. See the wikipedia article on Seppuku [wikipedia.org] for details...

      • Re:Umm....What?! (Score:4, Funny)

        by mcheu ( 646116 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @05:09PM (#13875413)

        The downside is coming into work on Monday and being handed a katana with the understanding you will "do the honorable thing."

        Hmm...

        A) Accept this decorative sword as a gift for exceptional service, with a nice 'thank you' note to follow

        B) Pose menacingly for the upcoming 'Boyz of IT' calendar

        C) Slaughter everyone in management

      • The downside is coming into work on Monday and being handed a katana with the understanding you will "do the honorable thing."

        Generally, the person with a Katana is the second. His job is to behead the suicider as he disembowels himself with a Tanto so that he doesn't embarrass himself by whining.

    • Re:Umm....What?! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:50PM (#13873866)
      Why bother with the pesky work of drawing up a well-structured arguement for what you want, and then run it by the people who sign your check?

      Not to defend the attitude of the article, but as an engineer I continuously present well-structured arguments (pretty pictures and everything!), and then have a manager make a different decision because of "a hunch" or project politics or the the Moon was in Jupiter's seventh house or their bowels were making them cranky that day or... something.

      Small example: I needed to order a component that involved a sensitive frequency. I could have the frequency in the part number, or the vendor could assign a random part number. I wanted the random number because the component was going to be used in an open area. Little Ms. Project Manager insited on having the sensitive info in the part number. No reason. She just wanted it that way. We had to have the component shipped securely at extra cost, opened in a secure area, the offending number removed with an X-acto knife, and then the part had to go through security to get cleared for the open area.

      If I had just ordered the part the way I wanted, we'd have save time and money, and little Ms. Project Manager, honestly, wouldn't have known or cared about the difference in the part number.

  • 'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said." ------ Or later they'll fire your ass for thinking outside the box / not getting approval. It's really a question of if you want to cover your ass, or if you're sick of working your ass off. Yes, it all comes down to your ass, so you get to decide how you want it treated ;-)

  • Nike Advice Not Always Good To Follow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Evil W1zard ( 832703 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:04PM (#13873467) Journal
    Seriously the Just Do It type attitude will more often than not lead to an IT disaster and subsequent loss of job scenario. Adding or changing architectures needs to be managed and approved. It just isn't smart not to go through the entire development lifecycle and not to get senior leadership involved right off the bat. You may think that implementing this new, cool architecture will be great for the company, but you might not know you are breaking something in the process. What about legal issues? You might think oh I will just install X copies of freeware Y and then it turns out that the software isn't free to corporate users... Stick with a lifecycle set of processes, good change management and make corporate leadership get involved so they semi-understand the possible pro's and con's of what will be done... Otherwise be prepared to get slammed if something goes wrong and you didnt do due diligence up front...

    • success is always good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:29PM (#13873689) Journal
      "Just Do It" works if you're successful. Not so much if things turn out poorly.

      For this guy, things worked out. Maybe it's more like "just do it if you know what needs to be done and are sure of your success".

      Then again, there are some managers who dislike anything that's not their idea or at least didn't require their blessing. If that's who you work for, though, I'd say get the hell out and find someone who rewards productive risk-taking and successful initiative. If you're the *head* of your IT department, you should be given a fairly serious amount of control over how things are done, *especially* if you've been tasked with taking over a high-cost failure, as this fellow was.

      I suspect our friend here had perhaps a bit more buy-off from upper management than it appears. He was probably instructed to "fix it, don't spend money, and don't bother us with the details". Does the fact that he succeeded without a load of bureaucracy bother you, or is it the adoption of OpenBSD ( no problems with corporate use there, BTW ) that bothers you?

      Again, I'm agreeing with you generally- going it alone is often a poor choice - but inaction is fairly often worse than action, and it's hard to argue with success. People tend to view successful execution of an independent plan as "initiative". It's only "insubordination" if you fail. The lesson? Don't fail.

    • Re:Nike Advice Not Always Good To Follow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:33PM (#13873719)
      I am the IT Manager at the company where I work. We have a few servers running copies of Windows for which one of the previous IT Managers was careless and lost the original media and licensing information. If the server breaks, I have no valid product key to use for them. They also happen to be running services that can be transparently replicated using Linux. Take a guess what they will be running should they break irreparably during business hours.

      Guess what my boss (the CEO) will say when he finds out I fixed it without having to spend any money. "Good Job." Guess what he will say if he asks how and I tell him. "As long as it works."

      I know this because I've already gone through this once with an FTP/Web server.

      Sometimes putting out fires requires you to go off the beaten path in order to fix the issue. You might be surprised at how PHBs respond when the issue is fixed quickly, didn't cost anything in the process beyond the labor that it would have taken anyway and instantly became a more secure solution (provided it was configured correctly).
    • There are two "Just Do It" approaches to take.

      1. JDI - Migrate everyone's desktop to Linux overnight!
      Pros: It's fr33 s0ftw4r3, d4mm1t!
      Cons: Everyone's happy with this idea, right?

      2. JDI - Fileserver has keeled over at 17:00 on a Friday. Fileserver *must* be working for 08:00 Monday. Windows install media not available, strong suspicion it was illegal in the first place. A samba server suddenly sounds rather attractive.
      Pros: Not only is it free, it gets you out of a tight spot.
      Cons: None, provided you can
  • My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said."

    This is not the norm. 99.9% of managers will go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing for the sole purpose of avoiding being accountable and responsible for their own actions.

  • Good luck to this guy!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by malraid ( 592373 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:06PM (#13873476)
    if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! at PWC ?? This guy is not going to last long. The problem with Big Bussines is that change is never well received, even if for the good. A lot of ISO and other regulatory crap make change a real PITA. But then, he might just get lucky.

  • need a new job? (Score:4, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:06PM (#13873479) Homepage
    My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said."

    yeah, that's also a good way to get fired.

  • "My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later."

    Yes, along as your solution works. Everyone has a skill set, and just because you play around with (alternate OS) at home doesn't mean you can just bring it into the business. Bringing a company (or department) to its knees just because you wanted to try XYZ is going to be job (or career) suicide.

    Not that I think most people would do that, but it's just a warning.

  • That's a pretty bold move (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Slightly Askew ( 638918 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:09PM (#13873501) Journal

    OS brands aside, one system admin has the power to completely restructure the IT infrastructure in a huge, multinational accounting firm with no prior approval? This may be a good report for Open Source, but for PWC, it is a bit embarassing, IMHO.

    Either that, or he's overexaggerating the accomplishment and he really just replace the OS on a few PCs and a server. The phrase "one domain controller" tells me that this is not a large environment. I wonder what the home office thought of this little stunt.


    • one system admin has the power to completely restructure the IT infrastructure in a huge, multinational accounting firm with no prior approval?


      I see that no one has RTFA yet. It doesn't appear that the whole of PWC is changing to BSD.
      Only PWC Japan.

      Next question - how big is PWC Japan? Is it a small boutique accounting firm or
      a big player like in many other countries?

  • I use PWC and I have never seen a more needlessly complicated Excel sheet in my more than 14 years of using Excel the fact was the the information they wanted would barely fill a check from a cheap diner.

    Whatever, I'll believe it when ask for something in OpenOffice format.

  • Losing Clients? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by borawjm ( 747876 )
    I guess they do need to save money considering they are losing clients [usatoday.com]. It appears that many companies are moving to smaller accounting firms to cut costs and saying no the the "Big Four" (Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Ernst & Young).

  • "'My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money.' [...] 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.' Uemura said a lot of work was done 'behind the scenes'."

    Do they work for free? It doesn't take a lot of work to replace a domain controller.

  • This made slashdot because? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slashname3 ( 739398 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:14PM (#13873547)
    So they replaced some (not all) of their backend systems with OpenBSD systems. Primarly security systems (firewalls) because Checkpoint on the windows systems was not working real well.

    There is a significant DUH factor there.

    Now it would have been real news if they had replaced all their backend systems as well as their desktop systems with open source alternatives. That is serious news. But no, like most companies out there they just have a mix of unix like systems along with their Windows based servers. It would be interesting to know if there is any company at all that runs purely Windows systems (or for that matter purely unix like systems). I doubt there are any. So running a mix of systems is pretty much standard. Sure the percentages will vary. As such this is not really big news.

    Wake me up again when they have switched all their clients or even a significant portion of their clients to open source alternatives. That will be real news.

  • Thanks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by falzer ( 224563 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:15PM (#13873561)
    'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said.

    It's easier to get forgiveness than to get permission.

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by kuzb ( 724081 )
    This has to be the worst advice I've ever heard anyone give. Not only is this stupid from the standpoint that nobody will be aware of a change which affects a critical system, but if it breaks, it will all come crashing down on YOU. Making a move to opensource can be a good idea, but not this way. Not if you like your job.

  • Will the nightmare of OpenBSD then drive them to suicide?

  • That's great (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ivoras ( 455934 ) <ivoras@NospaM.fer.hr> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:24PM (#13873632) Homepage
    The gist of TFA is: they did it because it's cheaper. Not because of philisophical properties of Free or Open source ("Philosophy doesn't pay the bills!"), not because of technical quality, but - because it's cheaper.

    And that's great! Since a financial company did it, large software houses can no longer say "Yes, it's free (as in beer) to use, but eventually you'll have to pay more to get competent Open-source techies and invest in more/different hardvare that if you just went with Our Solution(tm) all the way."

    And that is how you gain mindshare - not by making a bunch of extremenly technical reports saying how it's better then everything else, but by hitting them on the wallet.

    The downside is that because of using such "cheap" software, some other techies working for large software houses can get underpayed or sacked. We'll just have to see what the net balance gets to be.

    • Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scott7477 ( 785439 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:32PM (#13873710) Homepage Journal
      The point of this story is that PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS started using OpenBSD! This is a BIG FOUR accounting firm! Every IT exec in the world can now say "If it's good enough for PWC, it oughta be good enough for us." So this is a big win for open source.

      PWC advises many Fortune 1000, Global 1000, what have you on IT issues; there is a chance that this sort of internal use of open source software will lead them to recommend use of OSS to their clients. The C-level decision makers are talking to PWC and others, and probably not reading Slashdot.

  • All too familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:24PM (#13873639) Homepage
    I recall a couple of similar situations where switching the server to and OS/OS was the best answer. The first time, it was a startup ISP (back when everyone dreamed of starting an ISP) who suffered the same problems as described in the article. The problems were limited to the mail server and it was simply unable to keep up with the load it was given. I took a machine of far more modest capacity, installed Slackware on it, set up mail, ported over the user list and it all became quiet almost suddenly.

    Another case was when I took a job as SystemsAdmin for an ATM service company... similar situation except a bit worse... they had this bizarre mail server/proxy server thing running on a Win95 box. I almost wet my pants when I saw it. I built another handy-dandy linux box, updated everyone's proxy settings to "off" and set them up with NAT and everything was running smoothe as a baby's butt... again, almost completely sudden quiet. It was very rewarding.

    These were all back-end systems that people don't see but use frequently. And only when the stuff you've got ain't workin' is when this sort of strategy (as described in the article) is a good idea. I think it would be a completely different story if they took something that worked and made this tremendous change... that'd be noticably stupid.

  • Learn to use windows. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArchMagus ( 32772 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:27PM (#13873666)
    Ok, I don't as a general rule respond to these Windows vs Linux in the back end stories, but I have to on this one. The line in the first page says it all: 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.'

    This has *nothing* to do with Windows being teh suq. Rather, this has everything to do with the previous admin not knowing what he was doing. You don't run an enterprise shop with one DC (be that either NT4 or AD.) You have numerous DCs, and leverage this new fangled concept called redundancy. AD in a large scale corperate environment works just fine, I've seen 200k+ user networks using AD, and it scales fine. Many of these shops also use Exchange for their mail, and with a proper (and not disproportionately high, I might add) number of servers, everything runs smooth as silk.

    This sounds like far less a case of the Apps being responsible, and more like a case of some "admin" who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground being put in charge of a system far larger than he could handle. If I ever see anyone pull out this site as a case study in FOSS/Windows, I'm going to laugh in the presenters face, as they clearly don't understand the software.

  • Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mekkab ( 133181 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:32PM (#13873709) Homepage Journal
    Age-old adage of corporate beauracracy once again rearing its head.

    If you want results; just do it.

    If you want to tread water and waste time, then by all means keep going to those meetings!
  • http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200 51024113247 [undeadly.org]

    BTW: When he said, "just do it", he's not talking about informing management; he's talking about informing/surveying USERS. He's meaning, "Don't bother trying to convince users, instead, just tell them the procedures have changed, and this is 'The New Way' (TM) to do things. They'll do it, find it better/faster, than thank you"

    Shamelessly stolen, so don't mod me up.

    Mark T. Uemura (IP 221.249.159.51) (mark.uemura@gmail.com) on Tue Oct 25 14:18:17 2005 (GMT)
    It's unfortunate that reporters such as this guy would sensationalize
    a talk by carefully crafting his story from bits and pieces mostly
    taken out of context. So, in all fairness to my firm and to those who
    were not present, I feel compelled to set the story straight.

    First off, the story is not an interview even though it may come across
    as such. The title is rather sensational but I certainly wasn't
    desperate. There were problems and they were fixed and our team was
    just very resourceful in doing so.

    Gedda writes:
    > IT managers who want to deploy an open source solution but are worried
    > about company politics should go ahead and do it without asking,
    > according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan IT manager Mark Uemura.

    No, this is taken out of context. What I said was that we had very big
    and important changes that we needed to make in order to restore network
    and application stability. My reference to just going ahead and doing it
    referred to making the necessary changes behind the scenes. It wasn't
    about company politics and it wasn't about migrating services from Windows
    to OpenBSD. My experience was that we did ourselves a disfavour by trying
    to inform and explain to users and management the technical reasons for
    the changes that needed to be made. In fact, all of the pushback had
    nothing to do with OpenBSD. We needed to migrate from an old Domain
    Controller with a corrupt Active Directory to a new one. We also
    introduced the concept of working on Application Servers in Terminal
    Services to take advantage of server power for resource intensive
    applications that ran very slowly on users' PCs. So, the push back was
    related to things like "you'll have to login to this new Domain rather
    than the old one from tomorrow onwards." or getting users to change the
    way they work and use applications running on a Terminal Servers for speed.
    In the end, when all was sad and done, users and management realized the
    difference that we had made; no more downtime or data loss. Furthermore,
    they've never had everything running so smoothly and as efficiently for
    as long as they could remember. Their IT problems went away as a result
    of our efforts and the decisions that we made.

    In fact, all of the migrations to OpenBSD were either behind the scenes
    where the users were oblivious to the changes. Well, almost oblivious.
    Often times we would get "Hey, the Internet is really fast today, cool!"
    or "Man, can you guys like spill some coffee in the server room or
    something? We're not used to this much uptime. It means we can't go
    home early anymore!"

    In those cases where users did have to interact with OpenBSD, it was
    always well received and positive such as moving off of a very slow VPN
    for remote access on to a quicker and more user friendly alternative
    such as port forwarding applications through OpenSSH.

    > Faced with an unreliable network, Uemura went ahead and migrated systems
    > from Windows to OpenBSD on the premise that management would trust his
    > judgement.

    Once again, migrating services to OpenBSD was not an issue. So long as
    we did not compromise security in doing so. Generally, we did so to
    improve security and that's what OpenBSD is famous for and yet ther

  • More from PWC IT Manager (Score:5, Informative)

    by LoganEkz ( 552402 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:49PM (#13873861) Journal
    From Mark T. Uemura's post on OpenBSD Journal [undeadly.org]:

    It's unfortunate that reporters such as this guy would sensationalize
    a talk by carefully crafting his story from bits and pieces mostly
    taken out of context. So, in all fairness to my firm and to those who
    were not present, I feel compelled to set the story straight.

    First off, the story is not an interview even though it may come across
    as such. The title is rather sensational but I certainly wasn't
    desperate. There were problems and they were fixed and our team was
    just very resourceful in doing so.

    Gedda writes:
    > IT managers who want to deploy an open source solution but are worried
    > about company politics should go ahead and do it without asking,
    > according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan IT manager Mark Uemura.

    No, this is taken out of context. What I said was that we had very big
    and important changes that we needed to make in order to restore network
    and application stability. My reference to just going ahead and doing it
    referred to making the necessary changes behind the scenes. It wasn't
    about company politics and it wasn't about migrating services from Windows
    to OpenBSD. My experience was that we did ourselves a disfavour by trying
    to inform and explain to users and management the technical reasons for
    the changes that needed to be made. In fact, all of the pushback had
    nothing to do with OpenBSD. We needed to migrate from an old Domain
    Controller with a corrupt Active Directory to a new one. We also
    introduced the concept of working on Application Servers in Terminal
    Services to take advantage of server power for resource intensive
    applications that ran very slowly on users' PCs. So, the push back was
    related to things like "you'll have to login to this new Domain rather
    than the old one from tomorrow onwards." or getting users to change the
    way they work and use applications running on a Terminal Servers for speed.
    In the end, when all was sad and done, users and management realized the
    difference that we had made; no more downtime or data loss. Furthermore,
    they've never had everything running so smoothly and as efficiently for
    as long as they could remember. Their IT problems went away as a result
    of our efforts and the decisions that we made.

    In fact, all of the migrations to OpenBSD were either behind the scenes
    where the users were oblivious to the changes. Well, almost oblivious.
    Often times we would get "Hey, the Internet is really fast today, cool!"
    or "Man, can you guys like spill some coffee in the server room or
    something? We're not used to this much uptime. It means we can't go
    home early anymore!"

    In those cases where users did have to interact with OpenBSD, it was
    always well received and positive such as moving off of a very slow VPN
    for remote access on to a quicker and more user friendly alternative
    such as port forwarding applications through OpenSSH.

    > Faced with an unreliable network, Uemura went ahead and migrated systems
    > from Windows to OpenBSD on the premise that management would trust his
    > judgement.

    Once again, migrating services to OpenBSD was not an issue. So long as
    we did not compromise security in doing so. Generally, we did so to
    improve security and that's what OpenBSD is famous for and yet there's
    so much more.

    > "PricewaterhouseCoopers is a Windows shop but we were forced to use open
    > source," he said. "I inherited a real nightmare with servers going up
    > and down. There were e-mail outages and on top of that there was a bad
    > relationship between our users and IT."

    Well it's either replac

  • Failure is not an option (Score:3, Insightful)

    by warpSpeed ( 67927 ) <slashdot@fredcom.com> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:53PM (#13873901) Homepage Journal
    'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,'

    Unless it fails, then you will be blamed.

    However in my opinion, open source fails far less then Windows...

  • Apple's Alternative (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kildjean ( 871084 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @04:06PM (#13874695) Homepage
    Recently in seeing how much I detest Windows Environment, and although I love linux, its still too far complicated to use it in a collaborative environment, in my opinion and some of my users.

    Therefore I have been experimenting with other Alternatives, such as Apple's OSX Server. OSX to my surprise is an organized way of working with Unix. So in the past months i have been learning how to use OSX Server and have polished my skills into using it in "Hybrid" Environments, with the most excellent results.

    One of my clients was a Windows Shop, It took me several months to convince them to change the server into OSX. The prerogative was simple: Apple offered us the perfect growing up environment for a company of 20 something employees that could get as big as 50 in the next couple of years. How? Well Apple's Xserve and Unlimited Lic. OSX was the key. When I presented them with both investing plan's, which consisted of a Dell Server and Windows, and an Xserve and OSX, it basically came down to a 17k dollar investment to do with the Dell, Windows and all its licencing, and 4 terminal stations. In comparison with the Apple Equipment, the Xserve (2.0Ghz PowerPC, 1gb ECC, 80gb sata hdd (expandable to 3 hdd in sata raid 0)) and OSX Unlimited + Apple Remote (Unlimited), It only went up to $11,075.00. When I presented them both quotes, and told them that with the mac we could have interoperability with Windows XP pc's accessing the server as well, better security, easier configuration and other options, the company decided to take the dive and went the Apple way. Recently they had 20 more employees added, in which this would have meant an increase in licencing of over $2000, the company kept hiring and keeps growing without any problems and the IT Structure is solid. For applications, we Use Quickbooks 2005 for Mac and Quickbooks 2005 for Windows XP, Office for Mac and Office XP for Windows (althought we are going to change to Open Office 2.0 in December 2005). The reason we have a couple windows machines, is for some industry specific applications that we cannot find on mac, so we use them on windows. Everything else is run on the macs with no problems.

    I want to add that the Remote Desktop of Macs is an awesome tool. I can make OSX Deployments far more easier than it is in Windows Server Environment. The next client im going to work on this week, Im going to propose the same change, in a bigger scale... I know ill be successfull because the previous client is in love with his system at work.

  • Self-fullfilling prophecy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LaughingCoder ( 914424 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @04:22PM (#13874870)
    "Uemura said PWC chose OpenBSD, an operating system he is comfortable with..."

    "My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money."

    Seems to me the reasons they switched are spelled out pretty plainly in the article -- Uemura was a *nix person and OpenBSD was free. Yet somehow the abstract of the article claims PWC switched because "Windows was a nightmare".

    Yes, there was mention in the article that their Windows servers were bouncing alot. But the main reason given for the switch was to "spend no money". I suspect if Uemura had not been a *nix type and instead was a good Windows admin he could have fixed the problem without spending any money by instead properly configuring and patching the Windows servers.

  • Uemura sets the story straight (Score:3, Informative)

    by shking ( 125052 ) <babulicm@cuu g . a b . ca> on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:56AM (#13878473) Homepage
    ...here [undeadly.org]. I've reproduced the text below.

    Re: Computerworld: Setting the story straight... (mod 15/17)
    by Mark T. Uemura on Tue Oct 25 14:18:17 2005 (GMT)

    It's unfortunate that reporters such as this guy would sensationalize a talk by carefully crafting his story from bits and pieces mostly taken out of context. So, in all fairness to my firm and to those who were not present, I feel compelled to set the story straight.

    First off, the story is not an interview even though it may come across as such. The title is rather sensational but I certainly wasn't desperate. There were problems and they were fixed and our team was just very resourceful in doing so.

    Gedda writes:
    > IT managers who want to deploy an open source solution but are worried
    > about company politics should go ahead and do it without asking,
    > according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan IT manager Mark Uemura.

    No, this is taken out of context. What I said was that we had very big and important changes that we needed to make in order to restore network and application stability. My reference to just going ahead and doing it referred to making the necessary changes behind the scenes. It wasn't about company politics and it wasn't about migrating services from Windows to OpenBSD. My experience was that we did ourselves a disfavour by trying to inform and explain to users and management the technical reasons for the changes that needed to be made. In fact, all of the pushback had nothing to do with OpenBSD. We needed to migrate from an old Domain Controller with a corrupt Active Directory to a new one. We also introduced the concept of working on Application Servers in Terminal Services to take advantage of server power for resource intensive applications that ran very slowly on users' PCs. So, the push back was related to things like "you'll have to login to this new Domain rather than the old one from tomorrow onwards." or getting users to change the way they work and use applications running on a Terminal Servers for speed. In the end, when all was sad and done, users and management realized the difference that we had made; no more downtime or data loss. Furthermore, they've never had everything running so smoothly and as efficiently for as long as they could remember. Their IT problems went away as a result of our efforts and the decisions that we made.

    In fact, all of the migrations to OpenBSD were either behind the scenes where the users were oblivious to the changes. Well, almost oblivious. Often times we would get "Hey, the Internet is really fast today, cool!" or "Man, can you guys like spill some coffee in the server room or something? We're not used to this much uptime. It means we can't go home early anymore!"

    In those cases where users did have to interact with OpenBSD, it was always well received and positive such as moving off of a very slow VPN for remote access on to a quicker and more user friendly alternative such as port forwarding applications through OpenSSH.

    > Faced with an unreliable network, Uemura went ahead and migrated systems
    > from Windows to OpenBSD on the premise that management would trust his
    > judgement.

    Once again, migrating services to OpenBSD was not an issue. So long as we did not compromise security in doing so. Generally, we did so to improve security and that's what OpenBSD is famous for and yet there's so much more.

    > "PricewaterhouseCoopers is a Windows shop but we were forced to use open
    > source," he said. "I inherited a real nightmare with servers going up
    > and down. There were e-mail outages and on top of that there was a bad
    > relationship between our users and IT."

    Well it's either replace Windows with Window for Internet facing servers or find a more secure alternative that didn't have to be patched and rebooted so often. Bringing back network and applicati

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