Wednesday, September 17

So Sun wants to compete with Microsoft?

My old boss sent me an email today basically asking for my input on what Sun is doing to compete with Microsoft, called Sun Java Desktop.

The article he sent me as well as the Wired article, which for some reason didn't even make it to their front page. The actual announcement about this software appears to actually be from August 5th, almost a month and a half ago.

I find this quote sticks out for me (from either article):

Sun officials say its system will cost as little as $50 per user per year and can be installed on any computer that can run Microsoft's Office 2000. The software also is designed to interoperate with Windows-based programs such as Exchange and Microsoft Office.

As little as is an interesting statement. I'd also be interested in As much as in the cost factor as well.

Neither article has any links as to what is actually going to be in this package. Going to the Sun site shows this Learn About article and this "feature" article which doesn't really tell me much. Let's look at the components as I see them.

Major systems Sun supplied Supplied by others Other or unknown

Operating system (Windows 2000/XP replacement - non Graphic User Interface (GUI) component) - Linux - ? ^{Note 1}
Desktop (Graphic User Interface component of Windows 2000/XP) - ? ^{Note 2}
Browser (Internet Explorer replacement) - Mozilla - Mozilla.org
Sun One Messaging and Calendar (Outlook replacement) - Sun? Ximian? Novell? ^{Note 3 & Note 4}
Star Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and FrontPage replacement) - Sun - Openoffice.org ^{Note 5}
Mainframe connectivity software - IBM? ^{Note 6}
Imaging software

Other programs that are probably still very much alive and kicking in the Division of Liquor Control are Lotus 123. dBase III, Fourth Dimension databases and various batch files and command line utilities that are used in the Point of Sale system. Those would have to be identified and migrated. And the hard part might very well be the identification part.

Questions, questions, everybody's got questions!

My other concern with this is the amount of training that is going to be required, quite a lot. The entire staff of MIS is going to have to be trained. New standards are going to have to be determined and documented. The new software may very well look and act 98% of what the users are used to, but that 2% difference can make everybody's work life miserable. Fixing a sound card trouble under Windows is quite trivial. Solving a sound card trouble under this system may be trivial, or it may be a chore. A whole different skill set is going to be needed. Setting up network printers will be totally different. Laptops set to dial into the Internet and/or Liquor Control are going to have been completely redone. Some laptops may not even be workable to connect to the Internet because of the modems that they use. From what I remember about the laptops, that may be every one of them. Configuration software for things like the switches, routers and hubs is another situation that needs to be clarified.

Where is the training available for all this? Can New Horizons handle this, or is the training strictly out of California?

I have to wonder what extra software and/or hardware would be required for such a move? No additional hardware because you salvage what you were using for the Microsoft solution I can believe. I am just not so sure about it on the software side.

The company Sun needs to be looked at fully. They are more noted for their servers and for their workstations, not for their consumer software, which is the kind of software we are looking at. The major parts of Sun Java Desktop provided by other companies need to be looked at as well. Is Sun going to have umbrella coverage of everything they provide, or just the pieces/parts that they actually wrote or modified?

If Sun does not provide umbrella coverage, what is going to be the cost to get the support of the other companies involved? Because that will be an additional expense to what is already going to Sun. What about the additional software that Liquor Control is going to need? Where is that support going to come from, and how many dollars?

Liquor Control is going to have a number of people that use their own PCs for any work that they may take home. Most likely that is going to be a Windows PC, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Liquor Control is still going to have support Windows PCs, one way or another.

Another question that I don't think anybody really has a good answer yet: Is Linux sufficiently developed for the desktop?

Linux can be used quite well as a server, and I have no doubts that the computer geeks and nerds can use it as their desktop. But can the business customer use it? Is Liquor Control going to allow employees to install this software on their own equipment if they want to?

This is a new endeavor for Sun. A possible concern is what happens if Sun decides that this program is not as profitable as it should be, and drops it 12 or 18 months from now. Yes, the pieces will still work, but without the overall guiding hand of Sun, how do updates get handled? How does support now get handled it that happens?

Another question is how prepared is Sun for dealing with support? Do they have the people trained to pick up support for this software? Are they truly ready for all the different kinds of hardware that this software is going to be running on?

While Microsoft may be more expensive, it is a well known fact that they are in the software business, especially the consumer level software business for the duration.

I can not let this quote go without comment:

Singer said there's another key difference between Sun Java Desktop and Microsoft Windows-based systems.

"Guess what? It wouldn't have blown up ... with the worms and the viruses" of recent weeks, he said.

If and when Linux has the same marketshare as Microsoft Windows (currently 90-95%, depending on who is doing the figuring), then there will be just as many viruses, exploits, worms and trojans as there currently are for Windows. Anybody who doesn't believe that is believing in security through obscurity, which is woefully insufficient. Look at the marketshare. Yes, Windows has more attacks against it. If you write such software, do you want to hit an audience of 90%, or less than 2%? But is Linux more secure? Today (9/17/2003), Slashdot, a technology news site, reported that both ssh (Secure Shell access) and sendmail (mail server) have had to issue patches dealing with possible exploits.

Footnotes
Note 1 — Who's distribution, or based on who's distribution? This is important for support issues, as Sun may not be responsible for any issues with software that they did not develop themselves. Also, the different distributions of Linux have varying ways of updating their software.
Update From this, it is telling me that the distribution is a SuSE 8.1 distribution
Note 2 — I am unable to recognize which desktop, Gnome or KDE Sun is using. Is Sun committed to this desktop? Are they going to support both desktops?
Update It appears that this is a Gnome desktop, which is interesting because I just read a message in a local Linux user's group mail list that KDE is more like Windows than Gnome.
Note 3 — Client side - This reads like a Sun product from their website, but from the screenshot that Sun provides, it is produced by Ximian software which has been recently bought by Novell.
Note 4 — Server side - What additional cost could this be? Are you expected to replace your existing Lotus Notes/Exchange servers, or will this software work with what is currently in place? Will it work with anything else that is available in the Open Source Software world? Administration of either the Notes or Exchange server may still require a PC with Windows 2000 on it running the Notes/Outlook client.
Note 5 — While StarOffice is Sun's software to sell, it should be noted that this software is based on the Openoffice.org software. I do not know what additions or modifications Sun makes to this software, but I would recommend that Sun be made explicit in detailing the differences.
Note 6 — I have to assume that IBM has something similar to PComm for Linux to give you the necessary connectivity to the mainframe. Full compatibility should be key here, because if you need to start FTP(File Transfer Protocol)ing files to the mainframe instead of the PComm way of uploading files, I can see quite a number of automated tasks that are going to have to be rewritten, tested and documented. Full keyboard support should also be verified by users, programmers and operators.

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So Sun wants to compete with Microsoft?

Note 1 —	Who's distribution, or based on who's distribution? This is important for support issues, as Sun may not be responsible for any issues with software that they did not develop themselves. Also, the different distributions of Linux have varying ways of updating their software. Update From this, it is telling me that the distribution is a SuSE 8.1 distribution
Note 2 —	I am unable to recognize which desktop, Gnome or KDE Sun is using. Is Sun committed to this desktop? Are they going to support both desktops? Update It appears that this is a Gnome desktop, which is interesting because I just read a message in a local Linux user's group mail list that KDE is more like Windows than Gnome.
Note 3 —	Client side - This reads like a Sun product from their website, but from the screenshot that Sun provides, it is produced by Ximian software which has been recently bought by Novell.
Note 4 —	Server side - What additional cost could this be? Are you expected to replace your existing Lotus Notes/Exchange servers, or will this software work with what is currently in place? Will it work with anything else that is available in the Open Source Software world? Administration of either the Notes or Exchange server may still require a PC with Windows 2000 on it running the Notes/Outlook client.
Note 5 —	While StarOffice is Sun's software to sell, it should be noted that this software is based on the Openoffice.org software. I do not know what additions or modifications Sun makes to this software, but I would recommend that Sun be made explicit in detailing the differences.
Note 6 —	I have to assume that IBM has something similar to PComm for Linux to give you the necessary connectivity to the mainframe. Full compatibility should be key here, because if you need to start FTP(File Transfer Protocol)ing files to the mainframe instead of the PComm way of uploading files, I can see quite a number of automated tasks that are going to have to be rewritten, tested and documented. Full keyboard support should also be verified by users, programmers and operators.