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On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Hoi Yan Lydia Lam wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 26 Jun 1996, Jason Anderson wrote:
> 
> >Sounds like you haven't done your homework on where NT is moving in the
> >marketplace and where UNIX is headed.    The current market share that NT
> >has in the enterprise arena is huge considering how old NT is, and is just
> >getting bigger.  I don' t know of ANY Fortune 500 companies dumping NT,
> >only ones that are moving to it.

Actually, I have been dealing first-hand with about 50 companies who have
eagerly jumped into NT with both feet.  It's a bit like watching someone
jumping into a vat of hot grease.  For a very short period of time, they
are elated, then the harsh reality of the "Rest of the World" starts
crashing in.  Memory leaks, incompatibilities, lack of backward
compatibility, and sudden loss of connectivity to mainframes, users,
customers, and vendors suddenly has them begging for a way out.

It's amazing how interested they get in Linux after having an "Experience"
with NT.

I'm also amazed at how often I receive thanks once they have tried it out
(usually on a "boat anchor").  I haven't had anyone send me back e-mail
saying "I got Linux up and running and hated it, went back to NT".  Almost
all of the negative feedback is from people who didn't refer to the 1200
page manual that came with the jacket that held their CD-ROM.  Books like
"Linux Unleashed" are making the transition MUCH easier.

> You apparently have not been told about it.  Write to the IS departments
> of every single Fortune 500 company.  When they answer you (>50%
> response), you will know the truth.  (Burying your head in the sand, like
> an ostrich, will not make the truth disappear.)

Unix, especially Linux, is very hard to track.  Remember, there were over
4 million TCP/IP users before the press even started covering it.  Novell
was paying for full page ads.  KA9Q and Trumpet were just jumping around
the machines.  It was only when NCSA realized that 400,000 people per day
were downloading Mosaic that they realized there might be more of a market
here than originally estimated.

There are now over 21 titles on the Linux operating system that come with
a CD-ROM in the jacket.  Slackware and Red-Hat are openly competing for
market share, with Yddragasil "Plug'n'Play" a distant third.  Suddenly
CD-Roms containing applications are coming with Linux versions - and a
Slackware distribution set - on the back.

Unix has always been a commodity operating system in which the
applications can shine and thrive.  Good Unix applications can sell for
several times the price of the operating system.  In some cases, the
software can be more expensive that the hardware and the OS.

There are hundreds of free applications for Unix.  Most have "enhanced"
versions that can be purchased for a higher price.  If you want single
processor prolog for Linux, it's free.  If you want parlog for parallel
processing across several thousand processors, you pay a bit more.

"High Gloss" is also a big sell.  Netscape is a jazzed up version of
Mosaic.  Mosaic is free, Netscape Navigator gold is running about $60.

People buy the Netscape "Fast Start" server because it has nice GUI forms
to fill out instead of having to edit the htconfig file.  Sun is the
ultimate master of transforming free software into gold.  You can get RPC,
Corba, or JAVA.


	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard




From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Jul  3 22:37:21 1996
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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy