08.10.07
What is an IT Strategist?
The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo recently ended, and related headlines are filtering into the press. One of these headlines, 'Vista Aiding Linux Desktop, Strategist Says', makes me wonder what it takes to be a strategist. Cole Crawford, an IT Strategist for Dell, spoke at the conference and, based on the article, did nothing but hurt the Linux community... unless the Linux community is looking to promote Linux via idiocy and drivel.
The article mentions a few things which drove me nuts, some more than others... so let's start at the top.
"A number of companies have moved back to Windows XP after deploying Vista"
How many is "a number" given just how many companies exist? There are still companies running Windows 2000 because they don't feel XP is up to par, there were companies waiting for XP SP1 before they would switch and there were companies that still didn't feel comfortable doing it after XP SP2. Companies that made the jump to Vista were probably i) purchasing new computers that came equipped with Vista or ii) jumping in the water without checking for sharks first. This is why companies wait, you don't throw a brand new product into an organization and any company with an IT staff worth their salt would know this.
"The Linux desktop can do all of that. It can be interoperable with earlier versions of the operating system, is generally interoperable with Windows, can ship with an enterprise kernel and can be remotely managed by existing management solutions"
I have to question what any of this really means. Are products interoperable, or just the OS itself? Generally on Linux there are fairly severe dependencies and requirements and that's why, unless you're working from source, every distribution, and (generally) version of distribution, has it's own package. Are we talking about "standard" commands being the same across the board? If that's the case, I'd point out that configuring the firewall changes with almost every major kernel version (ipfwadm, iptables, ipchains). What is an enterprise kernel? How do we define an enterprise kernel and how is it different from a "non-enterprise" kernel? Lastly, what is this form of management? Is it SSH or telnet because that isn't really remote management... not enterprise quality remote management. Windows would never have succeeded if Terminal Services was the only form of enterprise management. Every Linux distro has it's own GUI config tool as well, and none of them have anything close to Active Directory and Group Policy for managing computers in a domain. Every time you want to install a new package, are you supposed to write a script to push out the tarball via scp and log in via ssh and execute all required commands? Lastly, and I can realize what this wasn't addressed, we have the issue of enterprise applications. They don't exist. There's no debating the subject... We don't have something to fully replace Exchange yet, nor do we have replacements for the Office line of products, including Project, Visio, Outlook, etc... We don't have a Sharepoint replacement, we're missing a lot of enterprise applications, which is really the reason why Linux isn't enterprise ready.
Now for my favourite comment... and yes, I do believe Mr. Crawford was serious when he said this.
He said Linux is a lot more secure than Windows as it has no registry, since everything is a file, which needs permissions to execute. There is also no such thing as a DLL, which Crawford described as the second most evil thing in Windows behind ActiveX.
I'm trying not to laugh as I type the rest of this but it's difficult. Linux is a lot more secure than Windows because there's no registry?!?! I hope this is some sort of joke, even the rationale behind it fails, mostly because it's unrelated. I would argue that you need permissions in Windows as well... the difference is the "default" level of security that exists... Vista does a lot to address this and make execution much more Linux like. Wireshark is actually a prime example. On my Ubuntu laptop if I don't run Wireshark as root then I don't have access to the interfaces, yet in Windows XP, it doesn't matter how I run Wireshark, I can see the interfaces. In Windows Vista, the response is similar to Ubuntu... I'm required to "Run As Administrator" in order to see the interfaces in Wireshark. I also get a huge kick out of the second part of the comment, that "DLLs are the second most even thing in Windows", and more so the thought that Linux doesn't have DLLs. Now Linux may not use the extension DLL but seriously... who would attempt to speak as a subject matter expert and not recognize that Dynamically Linked Libraries (DLL) are the same as Shared Libraries (Shared Objects) in the Linux world. How about a quote from the IBM website:
"a shared object has nothing to do with object-oriented technology! What we're talking about are dynamically linked libraries on the Linux platform (analogous to DLLs on Windows)."
Now do you see why I can't help but laugh? However this all brings me back to the title of this post? What is an IT Strategist? Are they required to have an understanding of IT? I'm really curious... but I have to say thanks to eWeek for publishing the article... I needed the humour to kick start my morning.
LonerVamp said,
August 10, 2007 at 11:11 am
…and that’s the sound of my hand smacking my forehead!
I’d love to know who has moved BACK to XP from Vista. Perhaps they buy computers from Dell preloaded with Vista and then reimage it using XP when it arrives, but that’s far different than a company performing a roll-out, and then opting to go back to XP.
You never know, the journalist may have egged up the quotes and story from the IT strategist…but either way, that’s a lot of idiocy in one article.
I agree fully with your points about Linux not being ready for the enterprise yet. I have those same feelings despite really enjoying Linux on a personal level.