Silicon Shecky

Windows 7 is coming out. Linux has a fwe new offerings including Ubuntu 9.04, Red Hat, and Suse. Mac has Snow Leopard due out soon. Many choices, yet some work well in the enterprise, and some don’t. Why not, and how can some of these become better for the enterprise? Lets take a look.

Mac’s are probably the worst offender for not playing nice in the enterprise, especially for a SBS office. Mac’s would be a perfect fit for SBS if the software that most SBS offices use was made for Mac. Costs of Mac’s is also prohibitive for an SBS environment, not to mention the more difficult time of setup and connectivity for Mac’s to an SBS server. Mac’s just work, but that is really only true in a consumer environment. while Mac’s are great for video and audio work, Linux and Windows have gotten better at being able to handle this stuff, and could eventually chip away at Mac’s stronghold here.

Linux in the enterprise is a great hing, but it tends to be back end mostly. Yes the desktop is becoming more and more user friendly, but unfortunately one of the biggest barriers in the Linux Community. They tend to look down at non-technical people, and when someone is starting to learn, there is a lot of snark that gets received that can turn people off to Linux. Compatibility with Windows programs has gotten much better, and there is a lot of software available for Linux. Major Software vendors still are not producing their software en mass for it, but with adoption of Linux as a desktop environment, it would happen much easier than with Mac’s due to the open source nature of Linux. The other problem with Linux is the multiple versions out there and the fact that there is tweaking at times needed for each version.

Windows is the de facto champion in the enterprise. The whole small business offering, the fact that they make both front and back end with single management tools, and that most people are familiar with the OS will keep Windows in this position for a while still. Unless a killer app comes out for Linux or Mac, Windows only has to worry about the long term and not the short term. Can the others chip away at Windows domination of the enterprise? Yes, but to overtake Windows is decades still to come without a killer, must have app that is only available on Mac or Linux.

So I’ve been working on a project at the office which is more annoying than anything I’ve ever done. I am going through licensing and see what we have, where we need to update, and what is what. The problem is twofold. First, the prior people never kept good documentation, so finding the actually pieces of paper with the licenses on them, or going to eOpen to check on what we have is nigh impossible. Heck, no one even knows what the eOpen username and password are for our licenses. This is a pain mostly because you need to create a Windows Live ID to use eOpen, and every time I try to do it with an actual e-mail address for the company itself, it fails, thereby forcing me to have to create a Hotmail account.

Second, there is no good piece of software to give you an accurate count of licenses installed. I know there is the license logging service on the servers, but it is not always accurate, I have to check it on each server individually, and to top it all off, it won’t show Exchange 2007 licenses, which I did find paperwork for.

Now if companies like Microsoft want people to stay in compliance with licensing, why don’t they make it easier to do an internal audit, so we can find where we are deficient, and then go through the process of ordering what is needed? Am I crazy to be asking for something like that, or is it just a matter of them wanting us to be out of compliance without knowing, so that we can get in trouble? I think that would be called entrapment in the legal field, but I could be wrong.

Windows vista I have looked at, and for the most part, considering it the spawn of Windows ME. Vista has its good points, and Microsoft tried with it, but with a moving target, stripped down capabilities compared to what it was supposed to have, and massive delays on getting it to market, Microsoft really messed up.

It wasn’t just that older software would not run on it, but software and hardware companies didn’t buy into it. It took forever for applications to be written for it, let alone all the issues with hardware drivers Vista has had.

Well, it seems that Microsoft can learn from its mistakes. Windows 7 has been in beta for a little while now, and most people call it a big improvement from Vista. The first Release Candidate becomes public on May 5, and yes I’m going to get it. What I am looking forward to seeing how it works is the newest feature announced for Windows 7. XPM the feature is called, and if it works the way it is supposed to , well, there will be very little reason not to move to Windows 7.

The idea behind XPM is basically Windows XP sp3 running in a virtual machine, which allows legacy apps to be run normally. The kicker to XPM is the idea that it runs seamlessly in the background. Apps that require XP still get shortcuts installed to your normal Start menu and when you launch the app, it seamlessly launches in its own window, even though it is on a virtual machine, you don’t see the virtual machine running. You don’t have to start a virtual machine session first. Supposedly, it just works.

We shall find out how well it just works rather soon. This is the one thing that if it works right, could save Microsoft’s reputation.