Sep 03, 2002
There has
been a flurry of announcements in recent weeks concerning
Linux
on the corporate desktop. Red Hat announced a new focus
on
desktop Linux to complement their server-focused offerings.
Sun
Microsystems announced a move into low-cost desktop systems
running
Linux, competing with such companies as Dell. These
announcements seem
to suggest these companies now believe Linux
has matured to the point
where it makes sense to run on a
corporate desktop.
| Linux has had numerous obstacles to overcome before
being truly viable in a corporate desktop
environment. |
Linux has had numerous
obstacles to overcome before being truly viable
in a corporate
desktop environment. Issues such as hardware
compatibility,
usability, technical support, and software compatibility
have
restricted Linux' acceptance among IT professionals. Through
the
hard work and dedication of Open Source Software developers,
most of
whom write code for free, Linux has overcome these
obstacles in the past
couple years. Because of this, the recent
announcements concerning
Linux on the desktop have less to do
with Linux than they do with
Microsoft Windows. Many companies
and IT professionals have come to
understand the single biggest
reason for Linux' upcoming success on the
corporate desktop:
There is no longer a compelling reason to run
Microsoft Windows
on a corporate desktop.
Years ago Microsoft made a
marketing decision to bundle together its
desktop productivity
software in a new product called Microsoft Office.
Due to its
lower cost (relative to purchasing each application
separately)
and myriad other reasons, this new Office product caught on
in
the corporate world. Businesses flocked to it. Microsoft's
Word
and Excel formats became the standard formats used in
business.
Compatibility with Office became mandatory, and in most
cases still is.
With each successive release of Office, and Word
in particular,
Microsoft changed the file formats, making it
especially difficult for
competitors to write filters to make
their software work with
Microsoft's. Thus, compatibility with
Office required running Office
and running Office required
running Windows. This is no longer the case.
In 1999
Sun Microsystems, a company specializing in high-end
servers
running Solaris (a UNIX variant), purchased a small
German company named
Star Division Corporation. Star Division's
claim to fame was their
flagship product named StarOffice. The
company claimed seamless
operation with Microsoft's file formats
and for the most part delivered
on their promise. Approximately
a year after buying Star Division, Sun
made the code to
StarOffice available under the Gnu Public License.
OpenOffice.org
was formed to begin maintaining and improving the code
base. Sun
would later use the code produced by OpenOffice.org and
combine
it with their proprietary code to release StarOffice 6.0.
In
January, 2002, OpenOffice.org release OpenOffice 1.0. The
developers
improved upon the already impressive compatibility
with Microsoft
Office. I have personally used OpenOffice and
StarOffice for
everything from simple memoranda to complex loan
amortization
spreadsheets and was able to use the files in
Microsoft Office. I,
like many others, have discovered that
compatibility with Microsoft
Office no longer requires Microsoft
software - including Windows,
because OpenOffice runs on Windows
and Linux. Barring specialty
hardware or software that will only
run in a Windows environment, the
average corporate desktop user
simply does not need to run Microsoft
Windows. Thus it is that
Microsoft's grip on the desktop has
been
broken.
Given the license fees (including a
forced subscription with XP) for
Microsoft software, the never
ending flood of viruses spread via Outlook,
and the ever
dangerous remote exploits, businesses have begun to
look
elsewhere for their desktop computing environment. Linux,
with
OpenOffice and/or StarOffice, is set to take over the
corporate market.
There is no longer a compelling reason to run
Microsoft software. The
reasons for running Linux are just
getting better.
John-Thomas Richards is a contributing editor to Open
for Business. He is a senior banker at a small financial
institution. He has been using GNU/Linux for over six years.