* Novell shares Linux migration experiences in white papers
I’m sure quite a few of you had a chuckle reading last week’s newsletter outlining the attempts by Nick Farrell of the U.K.’s The Inquirer to install SuSE Linux 9.3. One of the bigger guffaws came from Novell’s Doug Clower, who is a global solutions director (formerly a global solutions manager – I’ve no idea what that means translated from marketing-speak, though).
One of the bigger chuckles must have come when I mentioned Novell’s internal plan to roll out Linux on the company’s desktops. Last week, I said I hoped Novell would soon publish a paper on what it learned while rolling out Linux on the desktop. Well, “soon,” in this case, turned out to be last November when Novell published a white paper entitled, “Approaching the Linux Desktop – A Novell Linux Migration Study,” co-authored by Clower.
That paper is a good, quick read (see it at https://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/2294.html) but there’s also a longer paper that goes into more detail (as well as more marketing, unfortunately). The second paper is called “The Novell Migration to Linux: Real Business Value,” and it’s available at https://www.novell.com/collateral/4621400/4621400.html .
About one-third of the “Real Business Value” paper concerns the benefits and strengths of Linux as well as the business drivers for moving from a Windows-based desktop to the Novell Linux Desktop. Novell has 800-plus data center servers and more than 5,000 desktop users. The company moved all desktops to Linux and the servers to Open Enterprise Server running on a combination of NetWare and SuSE kernels, as well as to some “bare bones” SuSE Linux Enterprise Servers (SLES) for some single-use jobs, such as firewalls, Web servers, etc. Its ROI calculations could be useful to you if you need to cost out a migration for your organization.
Novell spent a good deal of time planning the desktop rollout. It wanted to move quickly, but also intelligently and efficiently. Novell’s top execs told the IT department to keep two priorities in mind:
1. Reduce licensing costs (mostly in the form of Microsoft licenses).
2. Don’t break the business.
The first part consisted mostly of lowering (or eliminating) reliance on Microsoft productivity applications. The migration team used the following criteria in evaluating applications and services:
1. Is there a native Linux version of the existing application?
2. If a native version is not available, is there a native Linux application that offers equivalent functionality?
3. If neither a native version nor an equivalent open source application is available, is there a viable interim solution?
That seems like a perfect recipe for lowering the costs of licenses while not breaking the business.
Get a copy of the papers and see for yourself how Novell did it. It could be a very valuable lesson in the not-too-distant future!
