[wplug] Request for corporate OSS success/horror stories

[Hosey, Chester]

I'm doing research for a project to evaluate the use of Linux in a
corporate environment. I'm a long-term Linux user in the home and data
center, but when it comes to migration of enterprise-level services I'm
a bit inexperienced.

I've read a good bit of documentation, and familiarized myself with some
of the enterprise tools available through commercial vendors. I was
surprised by the quality of RedHat's enterprise management tools -- I'd
never used RedHat beyond the level of individually configured servers.
Of course, there's a difference between managing systems individually
and trying to command a clone army of boxes. For management of single
machines on the back end, I still prefer some branch of Debian, but for
the latter, well, for common administrative tasks having to SSH to more
machines than I have fingers isn't something that appeals to me.

Does anyone have any success stories with migrating large existing
networks away from a Microsoft-centric setup? Due to my position, of
course I'd love to hear about things such as return on investment, total
cost of ownership, and all of the other fun things for which MBAs invent
TLAs. Due to my interest in the subject and love for the occasional
horror story, I'd be interested in hearing about any sort of anecdotes
about the pleasures and pains of finding ways to make inroads towards
use of Free software in a corporate environent. I'd hope that other
members of the list would enjoy hearing about any experiences you have
to share; if anyone prefers to share their experiences off-list I'd be
glad to receive your emails or phone calls, or even meet sometime for
coffee (n.b. the offer for coffee isn't corporate-sponsored, so don't
bleed me dry).

Please also note that I'm easily amused, so don't hesitate to send me
anything remotely interesting, or pointers to anything remotely
interesting.

For those interested in learning a little themselves,
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246380.pdf was a pretty
interesting read and includes descriptions and summaries of some
migration techniques and management tools. Also, apparently Sun offers
support contracts for OpenOffice, even for those using it under Windows.
Nifty stuff.

-- 
Chet Hosey
Giant Eagle, Inc.
Chester.Hosey at gianteagle.com