A Small Company Moves Away From Microsoft

Water Paradox writes: "A couple of years ago our company was firmly entrenched in the Microsoft way of doing business. All of our development was in Visual Basic and related proprietary tools. Open Source / Free Software advocates were a minority. Last week we made the switch from VB to Open Source development (Apache, PHP, my SQL, etc) on a Win32 box. This decision was made quickly, but came after eight months of evaluation. I wrote a short article about it here: Moving from Microsoft to Open Source, which may be useful to other folks contemplating the same switch. Yes, we're even proposing Win32 Apache as our default server, since it has been reasonably stable for us over eight months."

The problem...

[bconway]

...which I've run into with my current company, is that Microsoft aims for the big companies (and smaller ones too, of course) and gets them so firmly entrenched that a move just isn't possible. I'd love to move our mail server to something that doesn't crash every week, but with a few thousand users, it's just not going to happen. It's a good read, though.

Re:The problem...

[MyMarty]

A natural corollary to this is that with mainstream perception being that Microsoft products are the best. To laymen this is a natural assumption: Microsoft is universally acknowledged to be a financial giant in the software industry: it has a monopoly; a company with a monopoly must make a damn good product for people to want it so much.

I work in an IT service industry and if we tell a customer that we'll be developing for them on a linux platform using open source tools they give us strange looks and raise questions of stability and security. As soon as we mention the word 'Microsoft' they're all smiles.

Until the person on the street recognises the value provided by open source tools they'll continue to struggle in popularity polls.

Interesting idea... but not applicable to all co's

[cwrea]

I'd love to do more development with non-vendor-specific tools, but in the software consulting business, the technology framework has often already been chosen by the client.

Open source / free software still has a long way to go. It is gaining popularity, but most shops still buy their software, and for consultants who go in and build new pieces on existing systems, that often means using the pre-existing software infrastructure, especially if the work left behind needs to be understood by maintenance staff who are not conversant with anything but the vendor-specific tools.

On the other hand, I have seen a couple of projects where the client was small and had no software infrastructure to speak of (i.e. 'green field' development.) In those cases, the allure of "free" software made economic sense to the client. If enough of these small companies actually succeed and become big companies, that will increase the penetration of open-source / free software into the corporate world.

p.s. One thing that I dislike about commercial software is the hype companies sometimes try to generate surrounding a deployment of a large system. The buying companies sometimes make news releases that say they have "partnered" or have a "strategic alliance", when really what they should be saying is "we paid through the nose for X" (where X is your favourite system that costs in excess of six or seven figures.)

Why stick with windows

[MrBlack]

After making the change to Microsoft development tools why did you stick with Win32? Persumably new PCs that you buy can be installed with your favourite distro, and no doubt you will want to keep a few Windows boxen around for your legacy VB code etc. My other question is why did the developers make this decision? This seems to be more of a business decision to me, not a decision that developers should make. Developers should make technical decisions and business people should make business decisions. If can achieve you goals using VB or open source tools, then the question of which tool-set to use becomes a business one rather than a technical one. Which tools are most productive (so costs are lower)? Which tools are cheaper to purchase? (once again - so costs are lower - but this is less of an issue than tool productivity, since productive tools will usually pay for themselves quite easily). Which tools are more widely supported (to mitigate risk)? Where do our existing strengths lie? Don't get me wrong, I think open source tools can hold their own from a business perspective as well as a technical perspective, I just don't think business decisions should be made by technical people (unless they are also the business people). Developers always get pissed off when sales/marketting says "we can deliver X in 3 months". The business people are making a technical decision. Technical people making business decisions is no different. BTW if you're a VB shop moving to Open Source try Python and wxwindows (if you need a gui) and straight python (if you don't need a gui). You'll find the change very pleasant.

Re:Why stick with windows

[oli_freyr]

As he says in the article, the company owner had decided to move to a browser based interface. The technical people then recommended going with PHP/Apache on Win32 instead of ASP/IIS on Win32.
So you see it wasn't a business decision but a technical one, which tools to use, just like asking "Are we going to use Visual C++ or Visual Basic?".

Besides, it looks like a rather small firm (or medium size if you like) if you can assemble the entire development staff in one room... and discuss things... and consider their recommendation... ;)

P.s. read the article. The author spells out their reasoning quite clearly.

Re:Why stick with windows

[MrBlack]

I DID read the article, thanks very much, (although perhaps I did skip over the last part because I didn't remember reading anything about consulting the owner). I was quite convinced by the author's reasoning, but I was just questioning why (it seemed when I read it that) technical people were making a very major business decision with a lot of potential ramifications. Apart from this one paragraph mentioning the owner the rest of the article makes it sound as though the decision was made in a vaccum (i.e. one day the developers all had a meeting and decided to make a MAJOR change for our company). I'd still argue that a decision like "should we use visual basic or C++" is a business decision which should be made based on a number of things, including (but not limited to) technical considerations. Perhaps it is just my perception (or I'm smoking crack), but I think a number of things developers consider when chosing tools/languages/whatever are business considerations (Like productivity for example). From a purely technical perspective C++ is far superior to visual basic, but many developers might choose it for certain types of projects (where the limitations of VB aren't going to be tested) because they know (or think) they can be more productive in it. Having established that all programmers are also shrewd business-people at their core, now all we need to do is get sales/marketting to allow themselves to tap the innate technical knowledge they all posess and bring it to bear in their daily business dealings %{8^).

Re:Why stick with windows

[sh4na]

"After making the change to Microsoft development tools why did you stick with Win32?"

The reason is obvious: when a client wants a software done, many times his machines are not replaced. It's the client who buys the machines and the client's employees who will use the machines.

Just because you want X software, does it mean you have to switch systems? Spending money and resources training people, and of course switching all the other software that runs on those machines, if that is at all possible... It doesn't make business sense, and the company next door which doesn't force the customer to switch systems will get the contract.

"My other question is why did the developers make this decision?"

Developers are not drones. Their expertise is important in technical decisions as well as business decisions, especially in companies that base their business on development. Of course this should be a developer decision! Do you really think that management people have the basis to make such a decision on their own? Many a project and company has sunk because of that assumption.

Management and Development are different areas, and a good company knows that they must work together. Management tells development what the company and the client needs. Development tells management how to achieve that. After all, they're the ones developing!

Management can't and does not have an idea of the efficiency or performance or anything of a technical tool. It's just not their area of competence. They can have an idea *if* the developers are consulted. These two areas must work together on equal ground if a company is to succeed, and this was what happened in this company.

Shana
----> Gone Crazy, Back Soon, Leave Message

VB here to stay

[jmoshakis]

With the apparent incompatibilities between VB and VB .Net I found it interesting that one of the strengths was "VB is here to stay All clients trust that VB code we give them will not be obsolete soon after." umm

We've made a similar move

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Our firm, a small VAR/ASP, has decided to make a similar move to Linux/Perl/Apache from Windows/ASP/IIS.

Similar reasons, too. However our ownership have decided to stick with Microsoft SQL Server on the database side. Looks like our options on the Unix side for databases will be limited to SyBase, based on the ease of porting code from MS-SQL.

I wonder if this indicates a real trend, or just a couple of isolated incidents. Part of Microsoft's strength is the army of small developers...

Nice change!

[kko]

It's great to hear from people making the change to better software...
Open Source software has got such a long way to go, but look at where it has already gone with little or no money to support it...