RE: Gartner Group: DO NOT USE IIS! -- MIDRANGE-L

Absolutely!

I would like to start working with Evolution (www.ximian.com) as it looks to
be a decent Outlook workalike. I have not had the opportunity to upgrade the
one Linux box I play with at work to run Evolution. The thing that kills
this currently is the fact that we run totally on Exchange site connectors
and MAPI internally. We are prohibited from running POP3 & STMP within the
company. The only SMTP-enabled server is our Exchange email gateway at
division HQ.

The "other" problem that plagues alternative solutions is second-running.
Remember when Office 97 came out (I think) that changed document file
formats? Everyone was in a mad rush to upgrade to O97 just to remain
compatible. People do NOT use the "save as" feature to make their documents
readable by others. "If I use Office XP, by golly everyone I communicate
with should be using Office XP too!" As long as a single company pushes
proprietary file or protocol formats, alternative solutions are always
running to stand still.

Things definitely look better in the server market. As long as we have open
standard and documented RFCs, everyone can interoperate. Samba is a
wonderful program, and is a vital necessity for Windows interoperability.
Webmin is a decent graphical administration tool.

People absolutely balk at the cost of our AS/400 (well, maybe not people on
this list...). We were working through a disaster recovery/insurance plan,
and we guestimated the replacement cost for just the AS/400 and OS are about
$300K-$400K (model 720 uniprocessor with 1GB core and 80GB storage, +
accessories). Then our network admin points to the 8 $5K-$8K NT/2000 servers
they have, and wonder why the 400 costs so much. They forget that OS/400
comes with a free industrial-strength, enterprise ready database, and that
we purchased an unlimited user license for the OS. (The price does not
include vendor software.) We also make up for our cost by having only one
system to administer rather than 8, no rebooting the system, no memory
leaks, very well scheduled maintenance to apply PTFs (no, I would NOT like
to reboot now), don't need to Windows update 8 systems, etc etc etc.

I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, just trying to highlight
reasons why we are in the shape we're in. Too bad egos and corporate culture
make it difficult to use the best solution for the job. Fini.

Loyd

P.S. Client Access under WINE... am interesting thought.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wills, Mike N. (TC) [mailto:MNWills@taylorcorp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 9:49 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Gartner Group: DO NOT USE IIS!


Loyd,

The point is more on the server side rather than the desktop side. I fully
agree with everything you said about the desktop side, even linux people are
saying that Linux is not ready for mainstream desktops. But there are two
projects out there to do what Outlook does. I believe there is Cyrix
support. There are other CAD programs that run under a Unix environment (I
know AutoCAD is _VERY_ expensive). Office packages? StarOffice, OpenOffice,
and AplixWare, and don't forget about the Corel Office Suite. For everything
else, it can be tested under Wine. But, you don't have to convert all
workstations.

However, on the server side, most everything is can be done through Linux,
they even have the pretty GUI interfaces for all of the configuration files.
With the exception of what Exchange does for email, but then you can use
Domino on the 400 for that, at least I think that has everything needed.
Samba can perform as a Primary Domain Controller, or Secondary. It also does
Windows file sharing and user authentication. Databases? There are quite a
few of those.

There, an answer for every question! I am not arguing, just stating the
facts.

Mike