Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 01:36:59 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Rob Andrews" <rob@cyberpunkz.org> Cc: "Matthew Graybosch" <matthew@starbreaker.net>, "Stanley Hopcroft" <Stanley.Hopcroft@IPAustralia.gov.au>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: How does FreeBSD make a difference in a government context ? Message-ID: <00b201c141af$69fc28e0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010920020622.C41586@switchblade.cyberpunkz.org>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Rob Andrews [mailto:rob@cyberpunkz.org] >Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 12:06 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: Rob Andrews; Matthew Graybosch; Stanley Hopcroft; >freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: How does FreeBSD make a difference in a government context >? > > >On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 11:15:12PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: >> Let me offer my $0.02 here on this. It's kind of long, but I >think that most >> people will enjoy this, and there's a lot of truth to it, even >though it may >> be insulting to a few people. > >Ted, > >While I agree with most of this I do have to point out that it is far more >involved than this process you've hashed over here.. I mean the ideals are >sound but the structure when it comes to government and larger corperations >is just not this simple to break down and attempt to change because of vast >policies these companies put in place to prevent any sort of radical changes >that aren't part of the company program. > It's true that I did a lot of simplification. But, a plan to execute something as complex as switching over an entire organization's computers to Free software cannot be outlined in a single e-mail in one evening. I wrote a book about it and still barely scratched the surface. But, it's by no means impossible. A large corporation or government entity is just like a large astrophysical mass in a way. If you want to move that mass you can either do it quickly with a large expenditure of energy over a short time, or you can do it slowly with a small expenditure of energy over a long time. It is VERY rare that you will have an event which qualifies as a large expenditure of social energy. Here in the US, we have actually had only TWO of these in the last couple of years. The first was the 50-50 split on the Presidential election - which caused a lot of fundamental changes in the voting system. The second happened last week with the WTC bombing. However, it's quite possible for a small group or even an individual, working over a long period of time to effect change - and I'm referring to decades here in the case of some of the largest organizations. All that is required is persistence. All these vast policies you refer to have an achillies heel - they are dependent on the single individual or small group of people getting discouraged and giving up. But, history has repeatedly shown that one person CAN make a difference as long as they are willing to put in the effort. It may take a lifetime, but it can be done. >I take for example the fairly recent Xcel Energy handover of their IT dept. >to IBM Global Services. (Keep in mind - this is just a corperation and >not the government which is where this original thread is stemmed from) > >Let me break this down for you short and sweet. > >You can drop all the figures and all the cost factors and security pros and >cons on the table to these folks and the fact remains fairly simple. > >Many of the larger corperations (Let's take for example Xcel Energy here >in the Twin Cities) have taken on the outsource happy trigger finger. This is a pendulum swing as I'm sure you are aware of. Typically, outsourcing becomes the poison of choice when the managers realize that the hassle of handling it insource is too much for them. So, they outsource. Then 3 or 4 years later all of the problems of having IT outsourced become too much for them and they pull it back in. >In order to streamline operations IBM was brought into Xcel to take over the >entire IT department and set standards and network policy for how things >are to be done by the remaining Xcel employees in the parts of the IT >department that we not under direct supervision of IBM. > No - in reality, what happened is that the folks that brought IBM in have bought off on the PERCEPTION that IBM can streamline everything. In short, IBM presented a pile of pretty graphs that are totally ficticious and supported the perception that they can do it better, cheaper, faster. This could also be viewed as an abject failure of Xcel's current Windows-based network to work as advertised. IBM was brought in because they said "We can do Windows better than you can, and we can promise to make it work" Nobody knows if the Xcel Energy outsource to IBM will be successful in the long term. It may be or it may not be. If it is not, then in 10 years the deal will collapse, Xcel will be even worse off than today, and at that time may be ready to jettison Windows and move to something that works. If it IS - then over the next 10 years the managers at IBM in charge of the deal will steadily gain in power and influence and more and more will see the remaining Xcel IT employees as hinderances to how they want to run Xcel's IT department. They will work away at those people and continue to erode their influence, ultimately absorbing them or getting them so mad they quit. Eventually, if it's successful IBM will entirely control the Xcel IT department - and guess what - if IBM then decides that Linux is where they want all Xcel's servers to be, do you seriously think that Xcel will be able to have any say in it? Of course not! Ultimately, everything I was saying merely applies to IBM instead of Xcel. You've just succeeded in changing one set of masters for another. Instead of a bunch of fossils at Xcel controlling the decision to deploy Windows on Xcel's network, you will have a bunch of fossils at IBM controlling the decision to deploy Windows on Xcel's network. There is absolutely no difference. >These companies look at the support and cost factor of having to deal with >these issues and to them, the cost factor isn't nearly as important as the >support factors. And the government is even less likely to care about the >cost factors of these things if they can get a good support contract to >go along with the hardware and software they are using. I mean they are not >in the business of providing network services to the general public. So >their point of view is far more reserved than a normal corperation. > Your forgetting that ultimately, all this boils down to the "man-on-the-floor" It's all personnel. If the majority of the IT techs in the world that are actually doing the work all decide they don't want to work on Microsoft anymore, then there is nothing that any amount of managers can do to stop the process. This is EXACTLY what happened to Novell. I don't think many people quite understand how Microsoft was able to drive Novell out of the corporation. They didn't do it by appealing to the upper IT decision making mangers, they did it by appealing to the front-line techs. Those techs then went back and forced their upper managers to jettison NetWare, and replace it with NT. Ultimately, even the most retrograde organizations that had total buyoff on NetWare had to scrap it, because of industry peer pressure. Novell did this EXACT same thing a decade earlier when they themselves succeeded in driving IBM Big Iron out of the corporation. Novell did it by insertion into the bottom layer and working upwards. >Point still: You can present it and say "I can't get tech support.. etc. >etc. etc." And the fact is that most companies have become dependant >on services or have contracts they pay thousands of dollars a month for, >and they simply are not going to change something over if they can get >the task accomplished within the resources available to them that they >are already paying for. > Yes - but if you really and truly use Microsoft support then I guarentee that you will NEVER be able to "get the task accomplished" I don't mean to be rude but this logic sounds like something from someone who has never used Microsoft support. I have, and I can assure you that Microsoft's support is completely incapabable of solving any problem that is a real problem. All they are able to do is read it out of a manual - if it's not in there then forget it. What saves them is two things, first that 95% of the support calls they get are made by admins that simply are unable to look it up for themselves, either because of lack of training, or inexperience, or laziness, and second because most people's "problems" with Microsoft are simply not real problems. The people in the business that really solve problems with Microsoft products don't do it by going through the front door of Microsoft support. They have their own tools, and the latest one that Microsoft gave them - Shared Source - is a pretty formidable one. It's this group of individuals - this group of "super techs" - which is really the only thing that is between Microsoft and oblivion, and Microsoft well knows it. Underestimating this group of people is very common. It's very, very easy like you are doing to fall into the trap that individual techs don't matter and all that matters is a bunch of rules and regs. All of those standards and network policy are worthless if the organization cannot get their hands on the PEOPLE that can enforce them. >Not to pick on you or even insult your arguement. But its not realistic >in most cases.. "We pay how much a year for support? We'll get the >support we're paying for else the company supporting it will answer to >a breech of contract.. blah blah" and so on and so forth and so many >different ways it can come out. > Show me one successful case of anyone suing Microsoft for breech of contract on a support contract. You know perfectly well what happens - the second that anyone seriously documents support failures, Microsoft comps them a year of free support. They do it quietly, and under the table. However, what your missing is that the only reason that Microsoft can get away with this is because most of these situations are rescued by the super techs long before they get this bad. The roads all really just run back to this group. The techs that are on the floor are what matters. >In some cases you might get lucky to get a manager to look at what you >are doing and see the vast improvements. But then comes the system of >network freezes and proper times in which something could be implimented >and tested and so on.. A process that could take years instead of when >it was needed most. And by that time someone has come along with a >commericialized solution that they will support via yet another contract >with the provider our an outsource agent of some sort. > >I've watched this in IBM, Cray/SGI, several ISP's, a medical intranet >company and so on. Its the same from one company to the next. I've >just basically grown tired of trying to support the freeware software >in the commerical workspace because there are so many issues to overcome >that it becomes more stress than just calling "Tech support" and getting >the help our contracts are good for and finishing the task at hand by >company spec. Not to mention feeling I've just wasted how many hours >of my time trying to do something I felt could improve something we >needed done virutally overnight. > Have you seriously looked at the financials of a lot of those large corporations recently? Many of them are not doing so well. Look at most of the airlines in the US and look at how they have manipulated what happend when the World Trade Center was blown up. Were you aware that the day after the disaster that airline lobbyists were hitting up members of congress for money? When it was their own underfinancing of airport security which caused the problem in the first place, and half of them were going to be bankrupt in a year as it was? Literally, that disaster saved their butts - for the next few years at least. But, many other large industries didn't get saved by the bell - or the bomb in that case. There's been tremendous shrinkage in High Tech - I've lost track of all the bankruptcies. And there's been merger after merger - first Digital and Compaq, now HP and Compaq, and tomorrow it will probably be HP and IBM. And don't even get me started on how much money Health has lost and all the acquisitions there. Continual expansion of IT costs like your saying - the purchase of commercial solution and contract after commercial solution and contract - is simply unsupportable. Like a chain letter or pyramid scheme it cannot grow past a certain point. Ultimately what happens is that in order to continue to support new IT initiatives, the organization either has to go Free software, or they simply start cancelling most of these new IT initatives. And, once THAT happens, those large organizations begin to lose momentum in their industries, prey for smaller, younger companies. >I can appreciate your insight however and do so wish that more companies >beyond just ISP's and small business would concider these freeware software >options to be a better idea. The reality will continue to be however that >its a process that would take years. And your afraid of that?!?! The Linux community certainly isn't - they do understand this and are running off a long-term plan that will probably be bearing fruit when both of us are on the front porch of the old folks home. >Not weeks or even months in most >cases. And especially with the government. When it comes to IT the >governments are very prone to be strict about what they will and won't use >due to policy and laws and so on that they must lay out well in advance to >any major changes. The history of Cray Research makes for interesting >conversation on this very subject. Another time however.. :) > :-) Well, one thing I will say about Government, is that it acts differently in different countries. I can't begin to speak about Government in Australia, I don't live there. But I can say that as far as goverment in the US goes, it's very subject to public pressure. And when failures in large commercial software projects in government make the press, once the dollar amounts are published, projects and contracts do get cancelled and heads do roll. Also, what the Federal government does in the US and what the States do is many times quite different. I will be realistic about one thing, though. That is, Free software cannot replace commercial software for some tasks, at the current time. For example, large distributed databases. Governments have some unique needs - such as a unified criminal database - which at the current time your not going to be able to use Free software to solve. Naturally, an effort to switch a large organization over to a Free source for something like this is doomed to failure unless it includes the creation of such software as it's first goal. But, just remember one thing. There's a shortage of good techs overall. Not in certain markets - for example in our city there's too many of them - but overall, there's a shortage and it's growing. A big, rich company like IBM headquartered in a major city may be able to force all techs they hire to toe the Windows mark. But, I cannot see how a big company like Gateway that decided to build operations in a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere, where nobody wants to live, is going to be able to demand that anyone they recruit away from nice places to live must tow the Windows mark. (of course, I hope you know that I'm being a bit silly there - but you can get the idea, I think) Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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