Forum to discuss and answer questions on Enterprise Agreement

[Robert Bushman]

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002 george@georgetoft.com wrote:

> Their opinion may already fixed, however, we have the opportunity to make a
> difference.  I can demonstrate using hard numbers that we can convert the
> common desktop (at least the ones I used at my last three jobs) to Linux,
> including Lotus Notes clients and Outlook clients (the hard part!!!) simply
> and with less expense than one year of Microsoft licensing fees.
>
> George

Apologies - this is a long one. :)

While I wholeheartedly believe that what you
say is true of most organizations, I think
Maricopa may be atypical. They are heavily
invested in MS based technology, and have heavily
customized it. I think we probably found the
most MS dependant 10,000 station install in
the state. Here's to good learning experiences!

following excerpts from:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article/0%2c%2c11961_616731%2c00.html

Precursor: in another article, they lauded their
1998 move to end-to-end Microsoft, since it allowed
for perfect interoperability.

  ...--the County rolled out more sophisticated uses
  such as its homegrown, line-of-business application,
  Agenda Central.

  Agenda Central carries out the complex
  board-of-supervisors' approval process, replacing
  a cumbersome and time-intensive paper-based
  system. By submitting a request to Agenda Central,
  which submits forms to all bodies required for
  approval simultaneously rather than serially,
  Maricopa County estimates that it shaved the time
  it takes for an agenda item to be routed and
  approved from eight weeks to about two.

This sounds to me like a rudimentary workflow
system. I'm betting it is written in something that
is not portable off Windows. Workflow systems are
expensive and cranky, with huge value added for
paperpushing operations (no offense intended, it's
important paper, and there is a lot of it to push).
I think it's fair to assume that migrating this to
Linux would be an expensive undertaking.

  ...the Electronic Business Center
  (EBC), and have certain items, such as pull-down
  menus, appear however they prefer.

Any bets on whether this requires MSIE?

  Several collaborative and messaging benefits are
  also available in [EBC]. Maricopa County
  has written a front end to Microsoft Outlook
  public folders to create a bulletin board
  system. With this system collaborative computing
  or information sharing can be carried out through
  the EBC. A comprehensive calendaring system shows
  all County and/or personnel events, such as hikes
  and major meetings. Technology tips and tricks are
  also available.

  "We integrated EBC with Microsoft Outlook 98 so
  users can have EBC as their homepage and it also
  has an interface to a groupware client so it can
  show, for example, your tasks or messages," says
  Paul Allsing, director of Maricopa's EBC. "[Our
  Web site] demonstrates the Web interface can do
  more than simply publishing; it can do tasks
  through automation."

Is this *really* a custom version of Outlook, or
just a heavily tweaked set of folders in Exchange?
Probably the latter, and therefore maybe it could be
accessed with Ximian Connector and Evolution. But
if it is custom software, integrated with Outlook,
it's not going to be a cheap migration - the software
would have to be reimplemented on Evolution. Also
bear in mind - Connector isn't cheap, and AFAIK
there is no major Open Source equivalent of Exchange
(integrated scheduling and messaging).

  The County is running Microsoft Internet
  Information Server (IIS) version 4.0 on Windows NT
  servers; it has a total of 30 NT-based Internet,
  intranet, and groupware servers.

  The underlying database is SQL server 6.5

Whaddya think? Platform independant SQL with a
persistence layer written in an independant language
to make migration easy? Maybe, but I doubt it.

  "The strategic direction for
  Maricopa County is that any future enterprise
  applications will be Web-based," says Allsing.

This, I think, is the thinnest point in their
armor. The best way to ensure a platform independant
thin-client architecture is to stick some alien
platforms in front of the front line users. But
I'll bet it's like it is here at my office - lots
of mini-apps, like our time accounting package, that
require the Microsoft Pseudo-Java VM or ActiveX.
No single app would break the organization, and
each has an easy to find alternative in the Open
Source world, but they're everyhere, like
cockroaches. Hunting them all down could take months,
or years - and every time you find one it'll be
because 100 people who just migrated are screaming,
"I can't do my job!"


So yes, I agree that converting one PC is easy,
and converting 100 PCs is only five times as
hard as converting one PC - but only if there
is no true MS dependancy. I fear that Maricopa
is heavily addicted, and that they see MS as
one of their great success stories.

For all these reasons, I think that a migration
that starts slow is in the best interest of
Maricopa County (for all the reasons that we
all know so well), and in the best interest of
the long term advancement of Open Source in
our government (if their first experiences are
encouraging and not too painful, and we keep
showing them that it is the most wise decision,
they will expand the program).