Quote:
|
Originally Posted by airspirit
As for the email question, I understand that there are more uses for email than strictly text messaging, though many of these "groupware" features are redundancies that can be handled in other ways. Many places are going to secure IM clients to take care of much of this type of work, or other multimedia messaging clients to take care of these needs, which IMHO is an outstanding option for a large and distributed client base.
|
Theres like ummm legal reasons that "IM" and other umm geek technologies arent used in the office. There are "other" solutions... hell going back to tree bark and burnt ends of sticks to write down a calendar is one of them. But all in one package thats works together is far more productive than finding about a dozen apps to do the same job. theres always "other" but doesnt always mean better.
Yes there are no people who specialize in convering a massive 40,000 person network from 100% NT/2K to Linux working for the state. It wasnt just about cost in people, but cost in reaserch, testing, and most packages do cost money to get any kind of support, and really... nothign gets purchased without support tied to it.
The real reasons are quite simple:
1. Linux has no solid or good network security infrastructure without implementing a Novell core for the network.
2. workstation support loads and client support loads would sky rocket trying to do what was multiple domain security into pretty much standalone network security via linux
3. We would loose functionality, predictible upgrade paths, predictible life cycles, and stable product evolution.
4. more specialized staff would be needed (increase programmer/development staff" to support code changes in the many custom systems that would be needed. This is the biggest cost factor of all... going from a system that we pay a low fee to buy and support to now needing people dedicated to supporting that in house.
5. Email systems for Linux are robust in simplistic uses, but lack in almost every other way. Would require a good deal of additional work just to get something that would be able to work with SOME of the specialized applications that use mapi communications to work.
6. Downtime of the conversion would be unavoidable and unacceptable.
Those are the real reasons.