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David Overton's Blog » Is Linux making a move into Small Business
Is Linux making a move into Small Business

I read this CRN article that Jo sent me earlier today and it makes me wonder about why people choose SBS.  I love it because it is an action packed package in the size of a matchbox and a price to match.

Others love it because it has a bunch of cool features and plays to their Windows experience.

One thing the article said, which I think applies not just to those Linux folks, but also to us SBS folks is:

Another partner said Linux rivals should worry less about the 800-lb. gorilla they are competing with and focus on making customers aware of their products and their benefits.

"The smallest companies with one to 20 employees often don't understand the benefits of server technology or don't trust the ROI projections," Fogg said. "Those companies often elect to stay with peer-to-peer networks

I think we can all learn more on how to do this.

ttfn

David

Posted Wed, Jun 28 2006 7:48 AM by David Overton
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Comments

Tim Long wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Wed, Jun 28 2006 10:02 AM
I completely agree. SBS is a slam-dunk in terms of price and features, but convincing a small business owner that they need it is another thing entirely. Most business computer users don't know the power of what they already have on their desktop, let alone the benefits of a server. It's not about whether they need Linux or Windows, it's about whether they need a server at all. It's up to us (partners) to somehow explain the benefits in terms of business objectives. For me, a technical person, this is the hard part and this is the area where I need most help from Microsoft. If a business is going to use Linux because its "free" then that business hasn't really understood the vlaue of IT. Can a company like that be turned around? Maybe not. So I think it is better to forget about competitive selling and concentrate on promoting the business benefits. At the same time, we need to promote things like the Small Business Specialist "blue badge" because potential customers still haven't got a clue about any of that. No-one has come up to me yet and said "I need a small business specialist". But what do I know - I'm a techie not a salesperson ;-)
iQubed wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Wed, Jun 28 2006 10:34 AM
Well said Tim, absolutely agree!

Business benefits all the way! This is what I like about the Small Business Specialist Programme approach.

Cheers,

Vijay
David Overton wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Wed, Jun 28 2006 12:05 PM
Tim,

we hear you - honest - and things are coming to assist.  Have you attended the SBSC Premium training - thinking the way that presents should help.  I am a technical person, really david - never would have guessed, but biting your tongue sometimes and just thinking "I can do this", or "this might have a few problems, but I can resolve them" can sometimes make the world go easier.  Also, 1st thing you need to ask your customers is what they want and if they tell you a load of IT reasons, get them to step back - "why do they want it - what do they want the IT to do to their business" and then you can decided what is needed, without talking techy to them.  Then, once they have told you what the impact is they want on the business, you can ask them how it will benefit the business, in things they care about - time, money, mobility, ability to take a holiday, grow the business, deligation confidence, control, customer satisfaction.  Finally, find out how much they would be prepared to pay for these benefits.  If the answer is 0, then challenge why bother doing it - let them argue it up for you.  I know this is a bit of sales 101, but sometimes for us techies, this can be really hard - to say "if you don't value it, perhaps you shouldn't have it".

However, as I said, we are doing some more as Microsoft this year to add skills in this area... keep tuned.

ttfn

David
Paulie wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Thu, Jun 29 2006 12:13 AM
I have sold SBS into a few customers who have existing Linux systems.  

I find SBS to be a very easy sell for smaller customers already on a Linux platform.  Maybe because 90% of the time they only have plain old pop3 email services provided by that server and customers and businesses need more than that now.

The price point of SBS means that is such good value given what you get that Linux being free does not really give a competitive advantage.

I did sell an integrated Linux/Windows 2003 & Exchange system a while ago which really got the best out of both systems in terms of value and it is a system I have always been chuffed with.  Unfortunatley it does not seem like there are that many people around willing to make these systems work together.
iQubed wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Thu, Jun 29 2006 12:48 AM
Hi Paulie,

Just interested in what way the Linux/Windows 2003 system was integrated that you mentioned? Linux running Samba v3.x can be a member server of an Active Directory domain out of the box today. The Samba project (http://www.samba.org) does a lot of work on implementing SMB/CIFS protocols for Linux so they can work pretty much as a full NT4 PDC and BDC as of Samba v3.x. They can't work as an Active Directory domain controller (yet?...it's on the way though, I think?)!

The issue is that the protocols were reverse engineered by the Samba Team by snooping the wire. Microsoft have not released these protocols publicly and eventhough Active Directory is based on ldap and kerberos, there are some propietrary extensions in there.

The recent EU case against Microsoft had the Samba inventor, Andrew Tridgell, give evidence as to the nature of these protocols and Microsoft are currently having to provide documentation on these protocols.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Home/Articles/2006/06/28/216657/Microsoft+looks+to+hit+EU+compliance+deadline+%e2%80%93+just.htm


Please note, I'm not making a judgement here as to the rights and wrongs of this (although I do have an opinion!) but stating the facts.

Cheers,

Vijay
David Overton wrote re: Is Linux making a move into Small Business
on Thu, Jun 29 2006 1:19 AM

Rule 1 - never believe what you read. The protocols are available under license at http://members.microsoft.com/consent/info/default.aspx  and this was setup in 2002.

One thing that I always find amusing is the amount of documentation that is "correct".  I have worked on commercial software projects before and the amount of documentation on things like network protocols is always lighter than I needed, but that was often because the reasons WHY choices were made is not clear, so you are often guessing why things are done a certain way.

MS has offered to make the source available too for the EU, but from reading the press, this was not seen as useful as digging through source is hard work.  There does appear to be a belief that we have a host of documentation internally that we are just not sharing.  As I understand it, this is not the case - we have hard work to do - we rely on people having had their nose in code, working on these areas and reviewing the source code if not familiar and using the existing docs (that were much less than that now offered to the EU) for information.

AD is more than just LDAP and Kerberos, as they do not do everything that is needed, however, the LDAP and Kerberos servers conform to the standards, even if we use some of the optional fields that these standards permits (although some implementations of Kerb only had 5,8,10 or 15 bytes for the custom fields and we used much longer data, but that was still conforming with the standards - just others had not implemented them fully).  Now, one of the objects that we used in LDAP in Windows 2000 Server was not the same as one of the standards, but a patch was made available and you can be standards based in Server 2003.

More on the integration features and whitepapers, including a "how to do it" guide can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/unixinterop/default.mspx, http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=2356486, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/prodtech/interop/unix/default.mspx, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/interopmigration/unix/usecdirw/01wsdsu.mspx, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/interopmigration/unix/usecdirw/05wsdsu.mspx, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/interopmigration/unix/usecdirw/10wsdsu.mspx and so on.  This is not easy to do on any platform, especially more than one OS or OS version.  When I had to build a kerberos solution a few years ago on UNIX platforms (I was a UNIX guy before Microsoft), this was very painful as most apps were not Kerb security aware.

Anyway, co-op & integration have inproved, but we do, truely, use standards for our LDAP, Kerb and most other protocols.

ttfn

David

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