William wrote to Lawrence at 19:25 28 Dec:

-=> Lawrence Garvin wrote to John Donohue <=-

 LG> Where I think the significant potential market exists is in the
 LG> reclaiming of all of the gazillions of Pentium(tm) class computers that
 LG> are worthless for Windows, but work just as good today as they did 7
 LG> years ago as a departmental Unix server.

 WM> So people are going to pay to put new operating systems on hardware
 WM> that they'd otherwise throw out? I don't think so. Linux or *BSD,
 WM> maybe, but not SCO.

Don't discount the possibility, William.

Keep in mind that the single most significant criticism still levied at the
Linux/*BSD world from corporate America is the lack of reliable customer
support. Warranted or not, that /is/ the perception in corporate America.

That was the one single advantage that SCO always had, and, I believe,
accounted for their relative success in the Unix on Intel market. In 1995
it also helped that the product was competitively priced with, and much
more stable than, the current Microsoft offerings.

What you may also be discounting, or simply not aware of, is that the small
business community, still has a heavy investment in pre-P2 hardware. It's
not at all uncommon to find a Netware 3 running on a low-end Pentium 133
system, or even an NT4 Server running on a P166 or P200. The challenge for
these organizations is that they cannot afford to upgrade hardware AND
operating systems. The only real need for them to upgrade hardware is to
install the new operating system (read: Windows 2000). Find them a
contemporary operating system that will still run on their existing
hardware, and you've allowed them to defer expenses in hardware investment.

Alternatively, you've given an organization a way to expand their server
base without making significant investments. If the total cost of a Windows
2000 server plus hardware to run it, is in the $3500 range for a small
business, and the total cost of an SCO OpenServer plus hardware to run it,
is in the less than $1000 range -- which one carries the more likely
choice.

Remember, also, that the significant majority of small business networks
still only use the server for file and print sharing. Occasionally as a web
or email server, and rarely as a database server. It is only the database
server that truly demands the big-iron hardware for a small business.

I'm not discounting the viability of Linux or *BSD in these environments,
but there are over a hundred distributors of such products, and somewhere,
somebody is going to have to make a stable reputation for themselves if
they wish to gain corporate market share. For the small business, it's not
the business owner they need to get the attention of, it's the
integrator/VAR or consultant that is making the recommendations. Show me a
Linux or *BSD distributor that has a "partner program" that can
compare to Microsoft's. Say what you will about Microsoft, and I'll
probably agree with it, Microsoft is making efforts to assist their
resellers and integrators on a daily basis.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is a viable solution for all
environments, but it's certainly an option to consider for those that don't
have thousands of dollars to drop on upgrading their one and only file and
print server.

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