[PLUG] How to explain benefits of Linux for corporate droids?

[Kelly Guimont]

If you have to convince executives, speak their language: money. Give them
information in dollars and cents. Every time the server goes down, it's down
for approximately 15 minutes. During that time, there is zero productivity
in the company. Given that weekly payroll (if you can get that number) is X,
then every time we have to bring the server back up it costs us Y in lost
manhours. Total that up over the course of a typical month where we have to
bring the server up once a week, and you'll see that running windows costs
us Z each month, above and beyond the costs of licensing and hardware
upgrades.
(keep in mind I'm guessing here)

Now consider the new licensing MS is pushing, this 'software as service'
model. They want you to sign a three year contract which does not guarantee
that you will ever see so much as a security patch from them. Are you really
willing to pay them <some exorbitant sum> on spec?

We have another option: Linux. Look here <show them some sort of nice window
manager that makes everything pretty and easy to find>. This is Linux. We
can open Word documents, we can crunch number in excel spreadsheets, we can
create presentations, we can get email and view web pages, and we can
<something specific to the company here>. Not to mention that this system
will also run the <name the new sw for engineering apps here>. This
operating system is free. Fixes come out regularly. There are many resources
on the internet to help find answers to issues, so there is no need to call
someone. And if you need a real live person to assist you, there's probably
someone in the Portland Linux Users Group who has useful information or even
the fix itself. (ok, so I'm going a bit overboard here)

So there you go. With a bit of company related research you should be able
to convince them. I've seen more than one person wet their pants at the
sight of MacOS X since it's unix guts but it's really pretty and does all
the stuff people want a 'real' computer to do (office/photoshop/games).

Hope this helps,
-Kelly
Chewie Rocky Horror is a hairy mofo. What's a brother gonna do? He's a
Wookiee.  -The Pulp Fiction Menace



On 8/2/02 8:05 AM, "Alex Daniloff" <alex at daniloff.com> wrote:

> Hello Linux folks,
> One big company management is thinking about developing new
> software product for engineering applications.
> This software should include database, web and desktop interfaces.
> There are two possible choices of OS for this product.
> Ether they should go with Windoze or make a leap into Linux.
> Windoze is less stable and more spendy on license costs and
> cost of additional software for DB and so on and so forth,
> The company has commercial support from M$ and their executive
> droids more familiar with Windows.
> Money is not a big issue for them in this case.
> 
> What arguments other than cost and license fees can be made to
> convence
> executives to give Linux a try.
> 
> Thank you in advance for all thought and conciderations or other
> sources of information.
> 
> Alex
> 
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