MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-06-25 |
| FROM | From: "Ruben I Safir - Secretary NYLXS"
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Tony Wiener - Eat your heart out - GNU/Linux in government
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Currents: Linux in Government: Winning in the Big Enterprise Space
Posted on Monday, June 21, 2004 by Tom Adelstein Printer Friendly Page Send
this Article to a Friend
Linux in Business The US Courts' server migration project will put core
applications and services on ProLiant servers running Linux.
In December 2003, a sound byte in the media mentioned an enterprise alliance,
not unlike hundreds we have read in the past. This time, six Linux
distributors--Red Hat, SuSE, Miracle Linux, Turbolinux, Red Flag and
Conectiva--joined with BakBone Software to form what they called the Linux
Advantage. The aim of the alliance was to provide another enterprise move to
bolster Linux.
The sound byte had all the trimmings of so many others we have heard before.
Peter Eck of BakBone provided the required quote, saying that their product
would "aggressively accelerate their Linux adoption plans". Peter Galli of
eWeek quoted a senior software engineer and an executive of SuSE. It all
looked like another reengineered press release made to sound like a big story.
This story would have made Linux stocks jump a few years ago, but in December
2003, it had all the pizazz of a yawn.
So what happened? BakBone winds up grabbing a huge contract win: supporting
the new server integration project for the United States Courts. Turns out
that the Judiciary started migrating its core applications to HP ProLiant
servers running Linux. The internal staff of the courts went looking for a
solution to meet its needs and found BakBone, and that recommendation led to
the contract award.
The Federal Courts
As recently as August 2003, the Administrative Office of the US Court (AOUSC)
was said to provide services to approximately 30,000 federal judges and court
staff at approximately 800 sites. The AOUSC, the administrative arm of the
federal judicial branch, provides services to the federal courts and judges in
the areas of administration, program management and policy development.
At least one of AOUSC's vendors, American Management Systems (AMS), provides
the district court financial management solution, Momentum. Momentum runs on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux. AMS is reported to have its solution in 94 district
courts. AMS said it is the AOUSC's largest financial services vendor.
AOUSC also awarded a $9 million contract in November 2003 to migrate the
federal courts national information technology infrastructure to the
Linux/Intel platform. That's a fair commitment to a low-cost solution, under
the cloud of alleged copyright infringement with not much in the way of
indemnification.
AOUSC began moving its case management, finance and accounting, probation,
pretrial services and case-tracking management systems to Linux from Solaris,
which AOUSC uses on Intel's x86 server architecture. The move from Solaris to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advance Server seems familiar to other initiatives in
global enterprises.
The migration from Solaris/x86 to Linux/x86 will be managed by in-house staff,
according a story by Michael S. Mimoso. In his story, Mimoso quoted Karen
Redmond as saying "contractual assistance will be used as needed to augment
in-house staff in providing additional technical and logistical support for
the nationwide transition".
Linux in the Government
Stories of large Linux deployments grab the attention of enthusiasts and
people looking for opinion leadership in industry. Few readers gravitate to
stories about firms who do the heavy lifting in the enterprise space. Not too
long ago, we saw a lot of criticism that Linux was not ready for primetime
because it lacked commercial support and maintenance. Then, we saw criticism
because Linux lacked commercial applications. As commercial applications
arrived, Linux was said to lack enterprise tools. You get the picture.
So what did the US Courts need in order to feel comfortable with Linux as an
enterprise solution? They decided they needed an enterprise backup and
restoration system that can get everything up and running quickly. AOUSC's
in-house staff found one they liked and recommended it to the prime
contractor--Titan Corporation, a $2 billion national security specialist for
the US Government.
The staff at AOUSC liked BakBone's NetVault system, which runs on Linux and
supports heterogeneous environments. As I dug a little deeper, I found out
that the company has about a 20% share of the Linux backup and restoration
market, according to IDC. Looking further, BakBone provides governments with
data protection and the rapid recovery needed in mission critical situations,
such as disasters.
Courts Changing Government Technology Trends
As I stated last week, "the government wants industry to bring solutions to
government problems rather than have government agencies develop their own
software. That makes it difficult for procurement officials to find their best
value proposition." In the same sense, the government rarely goes looking for
solutions.
The AOUSC has established a trend by migrating to Linux. Instead of waiting
for a proprietary-based industry to bring more of the same, the Courts took
the road of personal responsibility and made the right choice. Perhaps other
agencies and branches of government will consider taking the Courts' approach
in their next endeavor.
Andy Stein, the CIO of Newport News, Virginia, and project owner of
localgovernments.core.gov wrote a paper last year that sums up the nature of
government technology in today's cities:
*
New hardware technology and software systems hold the promise of
significantly improving service delivery by local governments. Rarely does a
community have the financial resources to exploit that potential fully. Most
cities have become a patchwork of technology with legacy hardware and special
systems existing alongside networks of distributed enterprise software.
*
Even networks deployed in the last ten years exist as amalgamations of
older software, such as Novell 3-4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Window NT
Server. Manufacturers no longer support these older software systems and the
hardware on which they run fail often.
*
New systems offered by independent software vendors (ISV's) carry new
licensing schemes that increase the total cost of ownership of computing.
Cities face spending more money upgrading to newer systems, or risk failure of
older systems. With the evolution of technology this problem continues to grow.
Government units from municipalities to Cabinet-level agencies may recognize
the state of their infrastructure and take the Court's lead before signing
more contracts for proprietary solutions. In fact, Congress simply might
suggest that government procurement in every nook and cranny simply stop. We
should stop buying anything unless it truly provides the best value proposition.
What About the Vendor
People wanting a warm and fuzzy story about an open-source company giving away
its core products will not find it here. BakBone follows a business model that
someone might call second-generation Linux. BakBone belongs to the Open Source
Development Lab, which uses and enables Linux. BakBone's role at OSDL allows
Linux to focus on enterprise data protection technologies.
The company's key product, NetVault Enterprise Edition, provides diverse
platform backup and restore solutions. If I have one of those amalgamations of
older software systems, NetVault gives me a way to back up everything. It also
provides ways to bring systems and database applications back on-line without
having to reconstitute the system. Its real-time capabilities of restoration
impressed me, especially after having coped with reviving mail solutions in
the aftermath of 9/11.
Governments in particular can benefit by using a recovery system designed for
heterogeneous UNIX, Windows NT/2000, Linux and Netware enterprise
environments. NetVault allows administrators to add and configure new servers,
devices and clients and control them from a central location with less effort
than what they are accustomed.
I also discovered that BakBone has a sweet spot in the small- to medium-sized
business market. So, although the company can enable large Linux enterprises,
they also can work for my local media client who has three times the number of
servers and workstations than he does employees.
BakBone is helping to make Linux a more accepted solution. Implementations
such as the one the Federal Courts have made make people think twice before
they dismiss Linux for whatever reason. As an analyst, I liked what I saw of
BakBone.
Some Things to Take Home
BakBone's success should remind us that we cannot overlook the possibility
that even the smallest sound byte may have significance. I recognize that
sometimes information overload can lead to a state of mind in which we become
numb to everything. But, can we afford to take for granted things that could
transform the quality of our lives at any point in time?
Sometimes our logic blinds us to possibilities. I wonder who would have
expected to see such companies as Hewlett Packard, IBM, Dell, Oracle, Titan or
BakBone joint-venturing with a company such as Red Hat two or three years ago?
Finally, consider that while an allegation of copyright infringement exists in
the Federal Courts today, those same courts have decided to migrate to the
alleged perpetrator in that case. It's something to consider. As Søren
Kierkegaard once said, "Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do
not know it, but cherished by those who do."
Tom Adelstein works as a Linux consultant and specializes in identifying
opportunities for open-source software in organizations. He's the coauthor of
the upcoming book, Exploring Linux with the Java Desktop System, published by
O'Reilly and Associates. He also works with the Open Source Software
Institute. He recently published two articles in Forbes about open-source
software and JBOSS. He also has written numerous articles as a guest editor
for a variety of publications.
--
NYLXS - New Yorks Free Software Scene
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
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