Switching from Linux and Apache to Microsoft® Windows® 2000 enabled Hard Rock Cafe to easily build a sophisticated and full-featured intranet, which the company is using to facilitate all areas of its business. In the year since the switch, the powerful tools provided with the Microsoft platform have enabled the company to develop a wide range of useful applications with just two developers, resulting in lower internal costs and improving the company's ability to communicate with employees across its 50+ corporate-owned cafes. Every Hard Rock Café employee using the intranet now enjoys a customized start page, providing easy access to the relevant tools and information needed to do their jobs.

What do you think of this? The whole original can be found on
http://www.microSoft.com/technet/tre...vg/hdlinux.asp
They even explain how to switch from linux to windwz!It can be handy one of these days, no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds like another BS piece of anti-linux propaganda from our friends at Micro$oft. Don’t believe a word they say. As for Hard Rock Café, why on earth would they need a detailed intranet anyway? They’re a restaurant aren’t they?

Well, I hate to break it to ya, but enterprises prefer M$ products because they know that they can get 100% support. Big companies like Xerox and EDS would rather pay big bucks for a support contract, instead of getting the software for free, and not getting support from anywhere.

My father works for Xerox, and they have started a program where they intend to get rid of any "non-standard" software withing the next two years. They define "non-standard" software, as software that is not properly supported. Their list of non-standard software includes Netscape, MySQL/PGSQL and Linux. Yes, they would rather use M$ Outlook, and pay for using it. Why? Because it's "standard software". They can't afford looking around for support. They want the support immediately. They can't afford spending hours and hours of rebuilding packages from source, that takes too much time, and for them, time is money. They can afford, however, to pay M$ big bucks so that their reps would come into their offices and fix everything for them... That's the general idea with big companies.

Many big companies are "scared" because of this... There is no single company that handles Linux support, and there is no stardard among all the distributions of Linux.

This is proof that corporate needs and end-users' needs are quite dissimilar. The first step towards conquering the corporate world fo Linux should be standartization. Right now with the miryad of distros available, each one with their own init scripts, package managers and configuration files, Linux looks like a big mess (when it comes to troubleshooting and support) to the big fat corporate guys. They can't afford downtime. They want a responce from a qualified expert (preferably the creator of the software they're using) whenever they run into trouble. They would rather pay big bucks for the software and for its support, knowing that they can get qualified professional support (preferably from the creator of the software they're using, i.e. M$) whenever they need it.

For now this seems like the only edge M$ has over Linux. If the Linux community sets aside its differences, and focuses on a single standard, we can beat the cr@p out fo M$!!!

you can standardize linux and start winning market sure, but then Bill will buy two or three of the companies and make m$ Linux XP and get all the profit. Bill loves this game, because it's so simple for him, when he has all the power and almost all the users.
About support you're wrong. If you buy M$ you will never get support from the software maker, you will get support from dealers who are "qualified" to offer support. You can get support from software makers only in linux ( since support is their only income)

How do you reduce costs with winblows
if anyone have tip how I can make money on switching to winblows please give it to me

Yes, it is possible, go over to a warez site and get W2K bootlegged copy - $0, installing this copy on 5000 corporate network machines - $0 if you don't pay your stuff for installation time, claim that you've lowered the total ownership with windows platform - priceless, for everything else there is Linux for keeping you out of prison.

this seems to be another antiMS thread

netscape communications supports netscape, red hat, turbolinux, debian, many GNU vendors provide full support for their own products and distributions, and they also allow you to pay for the support.

Also, for a decent pay-per-support program, try Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, i don't think there's a BSD at the moment that is fully supported by somebody...

Going to windows is just falling for their propaganda bullshit. micro$oft has maintained a site for some years now (regularly updated, most recently only a few weeks ago, there's now a seperate page for linux>winXP!) and anybody who falls for it deserves all the downtime and exorbitant phone bills from nonresponsive support calls that they get.

It's quite simple, really. Most of the pro-MS propaganda reckon that if your company uses Linux, then you obviously have your own in-house programmer to write software for you (they don't like to mention all the completely free (as in speech and beer) software available for Linux), so switching to Windows will save you the expense of one more salary.

Question Microsoft?

The way companies look at it:

1 qualified PC tech to support desktop workstations
35-50,000/yr
1 qualified NT systems admin supports about
60,000-90,000/yr

1 qualified PC tech to support Linux workstations
50-75,000 /yr
1 qualified Linux (Unix too) systems admin
100-125,000 /yr

Thats how a company makes money with windows. The total cost of purchasing 100 Windows workstations does not even come close to the total amount more you pay for qualified Linux admins.

There are not many qualified Unix/Linux admins out there. It took us 3 months to find the last one. And they are expensive.. I've see how many stock options people get and senior Unix admins command a bunch.

Well, but the total cost of ownership of Windoze will skyrocket once your IIS servers get infected with CodeRed (or some other script written in JavaScript/VBScript) and your 90K Windoze sysadmin won't be able to do anything about it except for reinstalling and patching the whole thing, restarting the server 10 times in the process, which means downtime.

Furthermore, the UNIX admins usually have more experience and more knowledge than Windoze sysadmins (most UNIX sysadmins are university computer science grads, while Windoze sysadmins are DeVRY/Uncle Sid's Discount College grads), because any kid who can use a mouse can be taught how to set up a Windoze box, but to set up a secure Linux box, you'd have to actually know what you're doing.

There's a good saying that most large enterprises uphold: "there's nothing cheaper than the most expensive". Paraphrased is means: "expensive stuff will not cr@p out on you and bite you on the @ss".

Microsoft stole there souls and redecorated them.

They don't OWN any of there software (atleast the MS apps) so not only will they be wasting tons of money, yearly, they will also gain many problems with IIS and general security... *coughOutlookExpresscough*. If this story is true, I feel sorry for them but it sounds like a m$ scam. Has anyone contacted Hard Rock Cafe? I have never heard of Linux > Windows converts.

How many viruses did norton detect? =) Sucks to be them!

For the comments made on Admin salary MasterC says it best:

"but I think of it as a nice cup of Joe... You can have a cup of coffee right now, or you can have a cup of coffee right, whichever you prefer."

MasterC = w00t!


Eh? Eh? w00t w00t!

You defiantly need to get new sys admins if they can't even recover from a virus like code red, but I do see your point. So it is OK for a Unix admin to allow an unpatched Apache server to sit on the internet for Dos attacks but as soon as an IIS admin slacks for 5 minutes, well he/she is an uneducated, lazy good for nothin pc tech?

Well, smart companies hire system admins that actually know how the operating system works. Problem is its hard to find good systems admins. If you have the attitude that all winders systems are "toys" then hire somebody who has never been outside of the gui. If, on the other hand, you want to make your Wintel environment as stable as your *nix then hire someone who is comfortable getting into the backend of the system and running commands.
Would you hire a Linux admin who never opens a terminal? Why then do you hire NT admins who never open a terminal?

No, I think m$ has done many great products like their calc (I really liked it) and notepad and uhmm... I'll be back with more information later...