Open source will gain during recession

Speaking as a CIO, you do not reduce costs by replacing software. Especially when there is going to be a cost in re-training, down time, etc. this is one of the most rediculous things I have heard of. 
Open source may gain traction in new markets. But the TOC will be higher as you will need to train people to use an unfamillair product. 
The problem with Open Source is that they cannot make it attactive to someone that then has to got a train everyone how to use a new and very unfamilliar system (and that costs money)

Its no great suprise that when you can get better software for free than the costly tripe from Microsoft, that when the chips are down paying money for crap becomes unfashionable.

Once people make that first step away from Billy gates overprice crashware, they will realise the grass really is greener.

I did a quote for a recent job, and came in 66% cheaper than the microsoft solution, naturally I used Linux and lashings of open sauce.

The usual comment about "Linux is more expensive to support" is the first to surface. But such comments are made by Microsoft "certified tossers" who know vey little about anything worth while. 

They also overlook the fact than Linux based solutions are almost immeasurably more secure and stable than Microsoft solutions and need very little intervention following deployment.

I laugh at those running Windows servers which are problematic the Wednesday after the second Tuesday of the month, now I wonder why that could be? Hmmm always wednesday morning....

LMFAO...

Anecdotal evidence from a party with a vested interested in the outcome is interesting but hardly evidence of an upcoming trend.

I am in sales and I've learned the hard way that until a signature is put the the actual agreement all the promises and desires expressed at any level in an organization are as worthless as a bag of rocks...

Every time I read these UNIX/LINUX will finally conquer (or even gain significant marketshare) claims, I always go back to my childhood...

Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my Hat...

Rocky: AGAIN ??

Bullwinkle: This time, for SURE...

...Pulls out an angry Lion...

Clearly, as a CIO, you aren't pro-actively doing your job for your bosses.

Firstly, its TCO = Total Cost of Ownership.

Its a marketing concept made popular by Microsoft to introduce a competitive "feature" against Linux. A competent IT person will know and see through this marketing strategy. (If you encounter a MS rep, they'll say something about offering more "value").

Secondly, Open source isn't the only one that needs to be re-trained on. Trying to introduce Windows Vista and Office 2007 requires re-training employees. We ran a trial on it, and we've discovered in our case, because of the current economic climate and the time required to re-train folks on the newer GUIs, its better not to change.

What we've encountered during our trial: Vista required us to buy new systems to run really well, and Office 2007 doesn't have the ability to select the old GUI that our employees are so used to in Office 2003. 

To save costs, we went for the middle ground. All the back end infrastructure is open source, while the employees use XP desktops with Office 2003.

This removes most of the server, etc related licensing costs. As well, we've reduced our IT staff down to two extremely skilled admin folks. (They alternate between shifts to ensure we get the most uptime while they remain adequately rested for their job)...So far, it has held up excellently.

The management and accounting folks are happy that we've slashed 37.4% off our annual budget. Based on our uses; we plan to slowly shift over to open source as a business...Again, this will be a gradual process in transition. 

The biggest failure of most CIOs is they blindly transition to open source without assessing their boss's needs. They dive into things. Then when it doesn't work out, they blame open source instead of taking responsibility for the screw up. Then, they run back to Windows. (I've seen this happen a number of times).

When you do things right with detailed planning and assessment for your own business, you'll save money and things will be relatively painless. 

When you do it in a hap hazard manner, it'll cost you a bundle; in both time and money.

Every business is different. In our case, open source has worked for us in terms of a robust back end. We'll stick to the WinXP/Office2k3 combo until they're no longer supported by MS...Which is 2014 (according to MS's lifecycle support information).

That should be adequate for open source solutions to evolve into a relatively usable desktop platform.

Do the people who write linux go to all the trouble of making each release so different that you have to be re-trained in each aspect of each release?
Cost to upgrade a dozen linux boxes: 1 hr each.
Cost to upgrade a dozen windows boxes:
training on the server £2500 + someone to look after the shop while I'm being trained + new licences
training on the Web server £2500...ditto
training on SQL server £ditto
training on office ..ditto
More expensive for complete idiots perhaps..
And all of this to create WOMS!!!

Although it's true that NEW software (be it MS or whoever) brings new costs for training (at least, possibly also hardware/literature costs), it is also true that there is another option (as frequently happens...).
If you've got no money to spend but (as it seems logical) you already OWN something (if you're reading/writing this one could assume you've got some hardware, al the very least... and since you're reading this it's plausible you've got some kind of os and possibly some kind of office suite too), then you can go on using what you've got. Unless you're stuck with a 90s piece of hardware (and software dating to that age), you should have something that works quite well for you... Even with Win2k and office 2k you've got a decent OS and a decent office suite. You would be probably missing the fancy stuff, but.... well you won't die because of that!

The firm I work for has a licence for 400 workstations.... we all have Win XP and office XP; the guys who do the fancy stuff have Power Point too, while we poor system guys don't. 
As far as I know no-one's complaining....

This is the stupidest comment ever.... Ok when for say you use a product like Microsoft what happens. Version 1.0 comes out you train your staff to use 1.0 then 2.0 comes out with some new widget.... training again. Now a great example of proprietary vendors changing thins look at Office 2007 compared to Office 2003 Big Difference.

Now with Open Source I can say for about 90% of the apps, you train once and then well it may take 5 to 10 years before re-training is required since Open Source does not try to make money from the "Justifying Our Existence" method of business like proprietary vendors do. Please tell me why MS had to change to ribbon interface in Office 2007 please someone tell me why.... my suspicion is that since MS tried to bring Open Source projects to court for copywrite infringement on interface they did the change. Does this interface change really help people, is it more useful, does it make you type faster..... no

This argument of training is such BS, I have been supporting computer users for 16 years now and I can easily say that what I learned from open source widget 1.0 has not change in version 3.0 just additions not process changes. What I learned in college 10 years ago on how to get Linux to do something still applies today. There may be new tools that make it quicker and easier but the old way still works.

Please tell me which proprietary vendor works this way. So this whole training argument is an ignorant assumption since with open source training only needs to be done at least once every decade not once every 3 years.

PS: Training aside think about migration costs with proprietary vendors, for example there is a project out there that uses a MSSQL DB to house over 2 million documents (doc, xls, ppt, ...) from version 2003 to version 2007 and since the format is proprietary then guess what some script/tool can't be customized to automagically do this. This will easily take 1 to 2 years to complete just in time for the next version of Office to come out so that it can be done all over again, YAY. Open Source has open formats therefore all is known about how the format works so creating tools to automate things will always be so much easier. This same project would take less then 6 months if open source was used.