Unisys: We No Longer Have A Way Out 196
rbochan writes "Some of you may recall a couple of years back when Microsoft and Unisys decided that a multi-million dollar ad campaign against *nix was in order, dubbed 'We Have A Way Out.' The results weren't what they'd hoped. ZDNet is now reporting that Unisys has done an about face and is now touting Linux as 'a mature technology and the right cost-effective option for many companies.'"
Is the market really moving? (Score:2, Insightful)
The world follows the tech people, and the tech people say its time to ditch Microsoft. I see something happening.
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:1)
Until GNU/Linux and other Free Software programs can provide the same quality of service for "Normal people", (that is to say your Mum or your Granddad) Commerical Software like microsoft will always be the mainstream. Perhaps to an extent free software already does this, but unless Linux, Open Office etc can afford to spend money on advertising, I don't think the bulk of the non-nerd masses will realise this.
Also, I do not approve of the way you group "google" with Firefox and OpenOffice. Remember, Gates
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
I hope you at least have that saved to a file you can cut and paste from, so you don't have to keep retyping it.
Games! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Games! (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
KDE ready for mainstream (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tech people say it's time to ditch Microsoft.
The business people don't necessarily get it. I talked to a guy yesterday who owns a group of companies such as an ISP, a computer repair shop, computer retail sales shop, web design firm, and business tech consulting company. He was showing me a home-grown web application that was quite impressive... until I asked him if it worked on Firefox. He laughed, looked at me and said, "No. Why would I support a browser with less than 1% of the market share?" I corrected him - 11% according to recent articles and as high as 40% on many of my clients' websites. His response was something along the lines of "when it gets to 40% across the board, I'll consider supporting it."
The point is, he's a business owner in our industry. He's a smart tech guy, but he's fully adopted Microsoft and defends its use. He can make a strong case for them to his clients, which are many. Business people don't see the world the same way that the tech folks do.
lol. that's why he'll never be really big (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Business and engineers are usually directyl opposed to eachother. At my place of business, I am currently debugging a real time data acquisiton system written in visual basic. I shit you not. Needless to say it is extremely ugly. People have a very hard time thinking outside their (sometimes small) range of knowledge.
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Wow.
For the record, I have a lot of experience programming real-time systems. Mostly to do with haptics, which always has a fairly high-speed servoloop running underneath a graphical 3D interface. The low-level stuff... it was in C++, i completely re-coded it in C just so I'd be able to port it to RTLinux. So I know what I'm talking about. And when I read your comment about debugging a real-time system written in VB.. well... I just had to say:
"Ouch."
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Can't you just make the connections longer, put the computers outside the clean room and give each fixture its own computer (I'm assuming PC type hardware which is cheap)? If the speed of light is too slow for that, then odds are your computer would be too slow to handle multiple fixtures too.
Anyway, your experience underlines how Software Engineering
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Its like an invisible wall, where suddenly the same effort to win early customers no longer works but you can't understand why. The fact that you immediately write off 11-40% of your (possible) target doesn't dawn on most business owners.
The frustrating part, though, is that he's probably making good money in the meantime. Ignoring 11% of the market because you can save on hiring extra "FireFox" expertise probably makes sense to a lot of small -to -medium businesses. In fact, I'm sure some businesses ar
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Whenever I see a general-purpose application that is Windows-only, Linux-only, or Mac-only, I see a basic lack of respect for the end-user. Why the hell should I have to wrap *my* business model around *your* IT choices? I also don't understand the mindset that sa
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:4, Insightful)
He doesn't have to "support" firefox, or IE or any one browser. He just has to write standard, correct HTML and do a little more testing in different browsers.
Really, what costs more, loosing even 1% of his online sales, or doing the above?
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
No, he really isn't.
He has to no more support firefox than he has to support the Ford or Chevy vehicles that his customers drive. Why would any smart businessman choose to exclude customers (no matter how small the percentage) when it costs them no more to allow access to everybody?
He has one of two choices: he can choose to use flexible, standard methods that work for everybody, or he can choose to customize
World events (Score:3, Insightful)
Peeps returning to the moon - before.
The US pulling out of Iraq - after.
The Hitch-Hiker's guide is edited to read 'a species so primitive they still think iPods are a pretty neat idea' - before.
Wikipedia acquires the majority of human knowledge, only to be wholy corrupted by mass spamming (like our current web) - after.
The collapse/reformation of the record industry - around the same time, I reckon. Possibly related. It's a similar idea.
(Ok I have
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Whatever is going on in the market, it's going to be a really interesting 2006.
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Is the market really moving? Intel Too?? (Score:2)
Gee, can we ditch Intel too? All I'm seeing these days is Intel being trounced by AMD in yet another benchmark.
Personally I'm happy to see this happening because I remember when Intel completely controlled product release cycles, and was in no hurry to bring out the next generation until they'd wrung the last dollar out of the previous one. AMD came on the scene with a 386DX-40 and things
Re:Is the market really moving? Intel Too?? (Score:2)
Thats wierd. I distinctly remember running windows 3.11 inside os/2. It could do whatever windows could. AND, it was stable as a rock, and didnt have random file corruption.
Re:Is the market really moving? (Score:2)
Re:Mature is right (Score:1)
Re:Mature is right (Score:2)
Besides which, non of the Linux kernel code could have originated before Mr. Torvalds sat down and started his hobby.
As for the GNU portion of the code... When's Grub 2 coming out?
Re:Mature is right (Score:2)
It didn't? (Score:4, Insightful)
The same ad depicts a scene in which a computer user has painted himself into a corner with purple paint. Sun's servers are manufactured in a shade of purple similar to that in the ad.
Sun responded to the campaign in a statement. "Sun still does not see Microsoft as a real threat in the datacenter market where reliability, availability, serviceability and security are key," the company said. "As for Unix being 'inflexible,' 'expensive,' and 'complex,' we feel those are terms much better suited to the closed and proprietary world of Windows."
Well, if the target was Sun as the article suggested, it seems to me things worked out just dandy from Microsoft's perspective. I would venture to say that Microsoft's market penetration in datacenters has grown quite a bit since 2002, while I'm equally certain Sun's has faded.
Re:It didn't? (Score:2, Troll)
closed and proprietary world of Windows.
I didn't realize Solaris was open & non-proprietary.
Re:It didn't? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It didn't? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop spreading FUD.
Solaris is open by the Open Source Initiative's definition. OpenSolaris is released under their definition of open, not Sun's.
Re:It didn't? (Score:2)
It depends how you define subset. It is like comparing Linux distributions with the Linux kernel. Solaris + Sun packages would be analagous to OpenSolaris + GNU packages. Future releases of Solaris will be build on OpenSolaris code.
Three, I stand by my initial posting. Sun will open source something when it is in their interest
Well, it would not make much sense for them to open source something when it is not in their i
Re:It didn't? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun has lost datacenter shares to Linux, not to Microsoft. Windows just isn't even in remotely the same ballpark as *nix for the kinds of things most people deploy *nix for in datacenters. I've never really heard of any significant cases of people migrating significant services from *nix to windows in the datacenter, other than "business" windows desktop services like company email, company file sharing volumes, etc. At most companies that matter, internal business services are just a small thing running in the corner somewhere compared to whatever domain-specific thing it is they really do with most of their hardware.
Even on the business desktop services side, I suspect we're (finally) seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. As more US states, foreign governments, and eventually the US feds adopt document standards like OpenDocument that OOo uses and start embracing the idea that government software must be open-source, the effect will filter down to private business. First to those that contract with the government directly, and then to businesses that in turn contract with them, etc. The net effect of that change will be that the typical corporate desktop will be running OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution/Thunderbird/Sunbird/etc (or similar in nature/compatibility) software, and the data being interchanged will be flowing in open formats on open protocols (even if, at least initially, the desktop OS itself is still Windows).
At that point the momentum builds strongly for converting the backend business services off of Windows servers and onto Linux, and off of Windows and onto something better (maybe a future better Linux corporate desktop, or OS/X for x86, or god knows what).
Re:It didn't? (Score:2)
According to a recent TechTarget survey of IT professionals, 30% said that Windows already dominates their data center.
From here:
http://search400.techtarget.com/originalContent/0 , 289142,sid3_gci968400,00.html [techtarget.com]
You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Re:It didn't? (Score:2)
Re:It didn't? (Score:2)
All the insurance companies I have spoken with about network jobs, have
used IBM RS series or other similar IBM gear with cisco networking gear, not M$.
The city of houston as a whole ousted M$ out the door, it has moved to Linux
Alcoa Aluminum, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bloomington, Indiana(city),
Boston Stock Exchange, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Cambridge Health Alliance (partially),
Chicago Mercantile Exchange, City of Austin, Tex, Cendant
I remember when ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I remember when ... (Score:2)
Bloody twits. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it -- you're interviewing two guys for an important job. One talks about all the good things he's done at his last job. The other talks about how screwed up things were and how he 'fixed' them. Who are you going to hire?
OT: People do this, too; there was an individual (name and gender withheld) at a previous place of employment with a resume filled with things like "Took a mis-managed department and brought it to productivity." Not only was this one of the worst employees we ever hired, but said employee got canned after six months because they did *nothing* but complain about how other departments were stopping them from doing their job.
The replacement had a more positive mindset, and caught up on the backlog within two months. Needless to say, he got promoted a couple of times.
Re:Bloody twits. (Score:2)
Re:Bloody twits. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, if you're looking to hire someone to fix a problem, experience fixing those types of problems seems like something you'd look for. I worked at one place where I literally fixed everything - the production web server was rooted and they had no security features in place, at
Unisys needs more PR (Score:3, Funny)
That's an easy request: just patent more popular graphics fileformats with submarine patents and then start enforcing them a few years down the line. Instant Press!
Re:Unisys needs more PR (Score:2)
Campaign slogan (Score:4, Funny)
Unisys' strategy for growth (Score:5, Funny)
Way to narrow it down.
Re:Unisys' strategy for growth (Score:2)
BackOffice/NonRealtime infrastructure
Mainframe manufacturing with all relevant support and consulting
PC manufacturing
So on ad naseum...
It is in fact a serious cutdown. It is quite strange to see the BackOffice and Batch Processing services go. They were doing it for a very large proportion of the banks on the UK market at one point.
Just a Thought (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as it appears Unisys was in it for the money, it could just be they have reached some kind of tipping point where they believe that Linux now is a viable alternative to MS where they didn't previously. You know, opinions changing when the facts do . . .
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
Maybe after seeing that Linux can scale to 1024 processors [computerworld.com] that it can scale to 32 processors on their systems. I'd like to see Windows "Enterprise" Foo do that.
No, not quite. (Score:2)
No, the campaign was not like that and not much has really changed as far as Unisys should be concerned.
Unisys did not directly compare M$ and Linux, they ran a foolish smear campain on Unix for M$. Everything they derided, from Sun purple on the floor to the "Mysteriousness" and cost, was aimed at closed sou
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
I may have been a legal patent, it certainly wasn't challenged and overthrown, but the way they used it was totally immoral, and they've never so much as acknowledged that their campaign was wrong (as in "immoral and evil", not as in "illegal").
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
It's easier to understand when heard rather than read because the emphasis will fall on "years." Someone will say "I haven't done X for yeeeears" and the tone on the word will imply a long time - sometimes five, ten, or even twenty or more depending on context.
To summarise:
You are cor
insider viewpoint (Score:5, Interesting)
Unisys is definitely making a move towards widespread adoption of Linux (Red Hat and SuSE) as a development platform, and various other open source development tools (eg, Maven, Eclipse, various parts of Apache Commons, etc). Regardless of current marketing hype from Blackmore and McGrath (the CEO), this is very much a bottom-up driven initiative. Open source software is finding itself in an increasing number of Unisys solutions, to the occasional consternation of management. So what you're hearing from the Unisys management publicly now is "hooray, Open Source," but what you would have heard a few years ago was... well, nothing, unless you worked for Unisys, in which case you probably would heard "stay the hell away."
Note: when I say "finding my way into," I don't mean "being stolen." Unisys is being extremely careful as to what the various license requirements are for the things it's using, so developers and architects are cognizant of the implications of the GPL and other similar "sharealike" licenses where their efforts are concerned. My experience with the developers here has been that they are pretty agnostic about everything except efficacy - they just want the stuff to work, and they want to get it done right for as little money as they can spend. I find that to be a healthy attitude.
For a guy like me whose roots are pretty heavily in open software, there's more than a little irony here. You may recall Unisys' spat with the Free Software Foundation [gnu.org], or... well, really a whole bunch of people, including Accuweather [com.com], over software patent issues.
One last thing: Peter Blackmore has identified outsourcing as a major component of the Unisys strategy. He's not kidding. Tons of Unisys developers have been axed over the last few years, and much of the development activity has been given to Caritor [caritor.com] employees, based either locally at Unisys offices, or in India. The ones I've worked with are good guys, but there's more than a little discomfort between the two groups. Many Unisys folks see his biggest impact on the company as having been the guy who sent Unisys jobs to India.
Re:insider viewpoint (Score:2)
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167419&
I only have respect for anybody that works at UNISYS...historically it's been a horrible place to work. Don't feel bad though, the contract where I worked on Unisys equipment was for EDS.....which might even be worse...
Re:insider viewpoint - Say this with great care !! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a statement I'd be making casually about any employer these days. With the way the current laws are, companies have been able to mis-use the court system to get subpoenas issued forcing providers to reveal anonymous poster's real names with the alleged intent to pursue a court suit for illegal activities, only to drop said suit once they've identified the poster. Then they harass/fire the formerly anonymous poster.
One such case can be found here. [theregister.co.uk]
This should
Re:insider viewpoint - Say this with great care !! (Score:2)
Re:insider viewpoint (Score:2, Informative)
Re:insider viewpoint (Score:3, Interesting)
LSS: I called up, asked about the machine, got a nice salescritter, and mentioned we wanted to run Unix on it, and the conversation suddenly became a Microsoft sales session. You critter couldn't possibly understand why I wouldn't
Re:insider viewpoint (Score:2)
Re:insider viewpoint (Score:2)
If you think it's only a joke, you don't understand language. It would certainly be an improper usage for a business letter, but I see nothing wrong with using it in an on-line forum. (I even like viri, however...tastes vary.)
This isn't as significant as the condemnation of ain't (which was a
Unisys = hoars (Score:4, Informative)
I worked on Unisys Sperry Mainframe equipment for almost 7 years. I can tell you categorically that Unisys tried every possible way to kill products it's customer wanted. When IBM was bleeding money Unisys had the better Mainframe OS (OS2200). Since then IBM has done more to innovate the mainfame market (moved to CMOS, embrased UNIX/LINUX, enabled OS390 for the Internet world). Meanwhile Unisys tried to get in bed with Microsoft and changed their product line so that anything that was not MS centric was basically a "legacy" platform where they just wanted the old Sperry/Burroughs customer base to dump their investment in older technologies and move to WinNT/Win2k servers.
The history of Unisys is that they put their finger in the wind see which way it's going and join the crowd YEARS after the initial party is over.
The only GOOD thing I can say about Unisys is that my contract (I was a Lead computer operator/batch scheduler) ended as a result of them promising equipment to the customer at cut rates that they then dragged their feet delivering...and as a result I quit and found a better job, doing LINUX!....thank you UNISYS!
Unisys has had CMOS mainframes for a decade. (Score:2)
The newer Clearpaths also have x86 processors on the same box as the 2200 processors, and can run both OS2200 and Linux concurrently. Hopefully someone will find that architecture combination useful.
Re:Unisys = hoars (Score:2)
Re:Unisys = hoars (Score:2)
Re:Unisys = hoars (Score:2)
Noun: hoar hor
1. Ice crystals forming a white deposit (especially on objects outside)
- frost, hoarfrost, rime
Adjective: hoar hor
1. Showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair
"whose beard with age is hoar"
-- wordwebonline.com
Microsoft in the DataCenter? Not reliable! (Score:2, Informative)
This is even more humiliating for Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is even more humiliating for Microsoft (Score:2)
One Case Study (Score:5, Interesting)
Have gotten her to finally consider that maybe all she needs is a good chunk of network storage. I've shown her how she can put 400GB of mirrored storage onto the network with long warranties on the disc drives using a NetGear SC101 for $600. She's considering it right now.
While Unisys may aim towards the higher-end markets than this, a Linux solution with good multiprocessor support and zero cost can make a significant difference in this ever increasingly competative environment -- especially if you're flogging Intel iron against AMD Opterons.
Besides, some things really do run better on Linux. IIRC Oracle 9i is a prime example.
Re:One Case Study (Score:2)
Re:One Case Study (Score:2)
You clearly haven't tried to buy a Dell with a non-MS operating system. Let's just say they don't make it easy. In one case recently they even were charging $50 more for the Linux option without Windows.
In may ways Dell is becoming a niche player. Sure Intel and Microsoft are still a big niche, but not the only choice they once appeared to be.
Punishment for the GIF patent? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately there are still all to many businesses who think that the way that they're supposed to make money is by selling information they create like a boxed product and choking off how it's used. Since their business model is incompatable with the Linux business model, there will likely be far more attcks on Linux, and especially freedom in software and information distribution, down the pike.
IMHO, copyrights can not survive the information age.
Re:Punishment for the GIF patent? (Score:2)
IMHO, copyrights have ruined our culture and replaced it with hollywood, they'v
Re:Punishment for the GIF patent? (Score:2)
> as the author of a piece of work.
I'm an author of a number of printed works, and I used to think this way. Then I started boning up on the history of copyright law, and discovered that copyrights really have nothing to do with the rights of authors.
Here's a good starting place:
http://www.copyrightmyths.org/promise [copyrightmyths.org]
The Way Is Shut (Score:2, Insightful)
stages (Score:2)
Talk about Deja Vu (Score:2)
I found it funny (Score:4, Funny)
I dutifully registered (expired last year) "TheyDoNotHaveTheWayOut.com"
and merrily pointed it to go to FuckMicrosoft.com [fuckmicrosoft.com]
Now you know how I feel.
Re:I found it funny (Score:2)
Ad targets "Unix", not Linux/BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel/AMD is advancing much faster than proprietary RISC. PC-based servers deliver much better value. Don't use Windows where you can use Linux/BSD (slashdotters cheer); don't use Sun where you can use Windows (slashdotters boo).
So there's not really an "about face" in Unisys's later support of Linux - its a continued drive away from expensive, proprietary and inflexible systems.
Re:Ad targets "Unix", not Linux/BSD (Score:2)
Re:Ad targets "Unix", not Linux/BSD (Score:2)
My employer is moving from (dec-compaq-hp) to Linux on generic systems purely because dec is on the way out.
This makes marketing harder for us because the competition run Sun, and advertise that they have "real" unix, not a unix clone.
For us, there is very little difference between Tru64 and RHEL. I don't think Linux is more flexible, at least the way we
Re:Ad targets "Unix", not Linux/BSD (Score:2)
Linux will run on the POWER5 platforms, IBM actively support it on these platforms too.
And as for patches, this is also distribution specific, and it`s also easier to remove what you dont use from linux (consequently you don`t need to install a patch for something you don`t have installed)
Open Source OR Unix NOT *nix NOT Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Unix, *nix, Linux, and open source are all different subject, and if Unisys hates Unix but likes open source in general, that does not mean they now like Linux. I'm pro-open sourced software because it's good and cheap. That does not
There is always a way out... (Score:3, Funny)
Unisys: a history of consistency (Score:2)
1999: In all cases, a written license agreement or statement signed by an authorized Unisys representative is required from Unisys for all use, sale or distribution of any software (including so-called "freeware") and/or hardware providing LZW conversion capability. [burnallgifs.org]
2002: We Have the Way Out: UNIX sucks!
2005: Linux Rulez!
not an about face (Score:2)
Re:No Way Out (Score:2)
How? Linux. Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I'm a Linux fanboy. Sue me.
Re:How? Linux. Duh. (Score:2)
No idea about the stuff on the inside, but the front lines *seem* to be towing the corp line.
Re:How? Linux. Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Scanning the main site with lots of un-cacheable dynamicly generated pages:
Re:But how does M$ do it? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But how does M$ do it? (Score:2)
Re:Never ever deal with Unisys (Score:2)
Re:uni..who ?? (Score:2)
(mod down in 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Re:uni..who ?? (Score:2)
Of course the fact that the patent office issued two patents for the same "invention" is the best joke of all.