Posted on 05/13/2003 6:23:10 AM PDT by ShadowAce
In the long term, the battle centers on the hearts and minds of developers.
The development and growth of the Linux operating system has brought a new question to the lips of IT managers: Why should I buy Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)? Five years ago, the answer would have been easy. With the dominant development tools, client operating system and client applications, Microsoft owned a certain portion of the enterprise.
But now that the Linux OS is rapidly maturing and companies are looking to shrink IT budgets, the choice is not so easy. Almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they can now find somewhere else -- without some of the baggage that comes with Microsoft purchases, like ongoing security concerns and mystifying licensing practices. Enterprises finally have a real choice, and that spells big problems for Microsoft.
In a recent survey of CIOs, Forrester Research found that about 25 percent of them were already in the process of replacing Windows servers with Linux. However, the switch may not be quite as seamless as one would hope. In fact, for enterprises that run their entire organizations on top of Microsoft products, a wholesale migration to Linux would be costly, Bill Claybrook, research director at Aberdeen Group, told NewsFactor. "Not only do you have the porting costs, but you have the systems administration costs. You have to retrain a lot of people," Claybrook said.
The real threat to Microsoft from Linux is not only that Linux will take away existing Windows business, but that it will overtake Microsoft in product areas where Microsoft is trying to grow its market share. Such a situation currently exists in the market for enterprise servers that run corporate data centers. Companies moving to Intel-based platforms from the dominant IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sun platforms now have a choice between Windows and Linux, and vendors from both camps are vying for this migration business.
Who will win? The market favors Linux, according to Claybrook. "Linux is going to take over all those applications where Unix is already strong," he said, pointing to the database server market as an example. "Linux scales as well as Windows does and has much better clustering capabilities," he noted.
But in the long-term, the battle centers on the hearts and minds of developers. Historically, the scarcity of applications on Linux has been a major advantage for Microsoft. That is no longer the case.
Instead, rather than general application availability, the biggest hurdle for Linux will be support by vendors touting a new generation of enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Still, the trend may favor Linux at Microsoft's expense. "There's a lot of Linux development going on, and it's going to make a dent in Windows' market share," Claybrook said.
Microsoft recently launched the Empower program for small ISVs (independent software vendors) to start defending against some of the developer defections. This program gives developers willing to stick with Windows a good amount of free Microsoft software as an incentive. At the same time, Microsoft also is sending out more evangelists to train application builders and help small ISVs get their products Windows-certified.
According to Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester Research, the development-focused benefits of the Microsoft architecture are still a strong lure. Strong developer tools, pre-integrated servers and a consistent programming model on every tier are attributes that emigrants from Unix should take into consideration.
The application shortage argument for buying Microsoft instead of Linux is becoming less relevant, especially in some of the fastest-growing application markets. For example, Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) recently introduced a content management system and a portal server designed for enterprise environments. Both applications are "truly mainstream" and are in segments ripe for "commoditization," Ed Boyajain, vice president of enterprise applications at Red Hat, told NewsFactor. In other words, in the areas of content management and enterprise portals, there are many more equivalent products cropping up at ever-decreasing prices. And when it comes to competing almost purely on price, he believes Red Hat will prevail over Windows-based offerings.
"We believe our community development model fundamentally shifts the way people make buy decisions in commodity markets," Boyajain said. "They're far more concerned with total cost of ownership and want low-cost, high-value solutions driven by standards."
To underscore this argument, Red Hat charges its customers a flat subscription fee for maintenance and support, in sharp contrast with the significantly more expensive seat-based pricing model that some other vendors, including Microsoft, use.
Invading the Desktop
On the desktop side, Linux is also providing viable alternatives to Windows. For example, Linux vendor SuSE recently introduced Office Desktop, a Linux product that includes a copy of Sun StarOffice 6.0, which is a competitor to the Microsoft Office suite.
Like other Linux distributions, the new offering from SuSE allows users to run Linux and Windows on the same computer, which could make the switch from Windows to Linux more palatable for many users. Just as importantly, SuSE's offering also includes a component called Crossover Office, a native implementation of Windows APIs that enables Microsoft Office 2000 to run on top of Office Desktop. So, those users who insist on keeping their MS Office applications can continue to use them while running Linux instead of Windows.
According to Jay Migliaccio, product manager at SuSE, Microsoft's insistence on driving up user costs through licensing fees works against it. On the desktop, a lot of corporate decision makers are looking at feature-rich Windows products and wondering if their client desktops really need all that functionality and cost, he said.
"The concern is the user's experience," Migliaccio noted. "The business user doesn't know much about the operating system or interact with it. The question is, do [the applications] provide the functionality they need, and can [IT] support them?"
Cost is, of course, a big advantage for Linux. "The down economy has been our best marketing agent," Migliaccio said. "Companies have to stretch their dollars, so they're looking at other solutions."
Overall, Microsoft will need to shift its strategy in a substantial way or face losing even more ground in what used to be its own backyard.
One. CAD. Thus far, Linux still can't match the CAD applications available for Windows, and unfortunately, Crossover Office and/or WINE won't do the job of allowing Windows CAD applications to run over Linux (yet). I understand the WIN4LIN does. I'm in the process of building a new machine, that is the route I will probably go (Linux and Win4Lin).
That's the key word... yet. Xandros is a Linux distribution using CodeWeavers CrossOver Office and has the potential to give MS a run for their money in the desktop OS market with a few more improvements. Especially if the public rejects Microsoft's attempt to be the big-brother, copyright cop for the RIAA and others with Longhorn, which I suspect they will.
That's a good question. If the Linux office suite doesn't have something comparable to VBA, it won't be replacing Microsoft in businesses.
Yes. OpenOffice and StarOffice both provide Calc for the Excel apps. As far as databases go, you have choices for that--MySQL seems to be the most popluar for personal and web site use. PostgreSQL (though I'm not familiar with it) is a step up in power, then you have Oracle.
Is there a programming language similar to VBA that can be used among the apps?
There are so many differnt languages you can use I can't remember them all. Perl, Python, C, Ruby, and even shell scripting like bash, ksh, and csh.
Can you do automation (where you control one app using code in another)? How do these apps compare for a power user?
I believe so, but I have not yet done that, so I could be wrong.
If you record a macro in Excel, the resulting code is VBA. However, VBA is much more than a macro language. You can literally control all of the Office programs with VBA. You can create programs that leverage all of the power of the individual office products into your own creation. It's very powerful.
XML is great and provides compatablility between programs, but that is different than controlling other programs.
Anything MicroSoft says about being customer (as opposed to user) friendly is pure baloney.
Competition is good. I don't see Linux taking over the top spot from Micosoft, but I'm happy it's around.
Well fundamental business evaluation is out of favor at the moment as a stock market analysis tool--none of these leading stocks with the possible exception of Bershire has any real earnings to speak of--so at the moment the market doesn't seem to care much about investment merit.
But, long term, one stock that probably is tied to the real world is MSFT--which is why this article is so important. The real earnings fundamentals of MSFT seem to be fairly poor--everybody is looking for a way to get around Windows and the Windows based software.
Three years ago, Adobe released a FrameMaker beta in Linux. Soon afterwards, they shackled themselves with MS to develop open type .
All raw Linux develoment has since died, AFAIK. It's a damn shame, since many of their apps were released in Unix and porting them to Linux would have been a huge boost in productivity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.