[ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Mission Statement / Business Model

[jeff hubbs]

> FWIW: some of my more computer-savvy clients have been asking about 
> converting to Linux, without me mentioning the subject. Some people DO read 
> the news.
> 
> Regards,
> Irv

I have been wondering if this has been happening in reality.  It sure 
seems like a question that SHOULD be being asked by anyone who wonders 
if they really need to be spending all that money.

Sorry I didn't make the meeting; I will try to make the next one.

A capability that I personally want to develop involves the creation of 
business-type IT resources utilizing older PC systems (for the sake of 
discussion, I'll call "old" anything that predates the PIII).  Several 
things drive me in this direction.

For one, even though I am not a rabid tree-hugger, it bothers me that MS 
OSses and software seem to drive a cycle of diesktop hardware upgrading 
that is resource- and money-wasteful.  I've almost gotten to the point 
where I feel like a PIII on every desk in most office situations is 
egregiously wasteful.

A little principle I "invented" (I put that in quotes because I don't 
think I could possibly be the only person who came up with it) when I 
worked for teh US Department of Energy is that of "returned value."  A 
desktop PC costs a certain amount of money X.  To get X in returned 
value, tha machine needs to be 1) on all the time 2) busying its CPU(s) 
at 100% doing gainful work 3) have its drive be about 75-80% full for a 
good reason with a lot of I/O going on 4) have plenty of network traffic 
going on.  Oh, and the machine must run until it breaks.  To the extent 
that those characteristics aren't being met, you've got some 
semi-arbitrary reduction down from X in returned value.

It shouldn't be too hard to imagine that in most cases, given that MOST 
computer hardware is desktop hardware, companies get ludricously low 
amounts of returned value for their financial outlay for IT. 
Furthermore, what I'm saying runs counter to how bean-counters handle 
computing resources (w.r.t. depreciation, etc.); in fact, it says that 
what bean-counters do is flat-out wrong-headed.

Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that when developing IT 
resources for an organization, something needs to be done to preserve 
and/or maximize returned value.  This means that if a company presents 
an office full of perfectly functional desktop machines that happen to 
be P90s, then a solution that calls for the replacement of the P90s with 
1.5GHz P4s or what have you is no solution at all, even if you could get 
the cost of the new machines very low.

Acknlowledging that StarOffice on a P90 is probably not pleasant, 
thoughts must turn to remote execution and treating the desktop machine 
like an X terminal, perhaps going so far as to eliminate disk drives at 
the desktop altogether.  If you can achieve this, you wind up 
trivializing the desktop hardware, making it highly interchangeable and 
disposable.    Thoughts turn to making very cost-effective and robust 
file servers and application servers.

So, if this "cooperative" wants to offer something that would really 
impress the typical business owner, come up with a pre-engineered 
solution that primarily utilizes existing hardware of most any age and 
covers 90% of the company's IT activity right out of the box.  I think 
that among all of us, we can probably agree on what the final result 
should look like and make it so that it can be ported to all kinds of 
hardware.  Companies that utilize this shouldn't expect to get away with 
paying nothing for hardware - if there isn't a decent server with 
hot-swappable disk drives, then one has to be bought or built - but, my 
gosh, compared to the money that companies are paying now for the pretty 
boxes from Dell, etc. and the MS tax, how bad can that be?

- Jeff


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