I promised I’d post my interview of Mr. Arnold Gamboa, Managing Director of Sparrow Interactive, regarding the successful migration of 16 of their Windows machines to Linux.
This has to do with my talk last April 8, Saturday, at the PLUG 2nd Quarterly Free Seminar Series. Incidentally, I learned of Arnold’s migration from his post about it at Pinoytechblog, so here’s some linklove in that direction.
Without further ado:
- Please tell me what you do, and a little bit about your company (how many employees, years in business, products and services, etc.).
- What were the conditions that made the company decide to look for an alternative to Windows?
- Did the owners / management assign a team or an individual to perform the selection or was it informal?
- Was there a report made with details such as cost, time to implement, etc?
- How did you go about your selection process?
- Is there anyone left who cannot avoid using Windows and why?
- How much in pesos do you estimate you have saved your company,right now and, say, 5 years from now.
- Assuming your company has saved money, has this allowed you to use the extra funds for anything else?
- How much had you already spent on licenses previous to the migration?
- What aspects of the migration were easiest? What aspects of the migration were the most difficult? Why?
- I assume your company, since it is involved in development, has mostly techie staff. How does this influence the migration?
- Whom amongst your company staff is not a techie? Did this person have a difficult time? Was he or she hesitant? How long did the non-techies (if any) become productive?
- What kind of computers do you have? Which specs are slowest, which specs are fastest?
- Are there any surprises, inputs or new behaviour you have observed? For example, is productivity enhanced or the same? Is anybody doing anything different than before? Is it quieter in the office or noisier? Are there people who miss playing Solitaire / Textwist? :)
- Since your company is into development, how do you assure that your applications work just as well using a Windows client?
- What would you advise other companies who wish to do the same?
Team Sparrow, Inc. is a web developing company. We both do outsoucing and application service providing activities. We’ve been into this business for 6 years. We have 18 employees.
Primarily, the BSA crackdown on pirated software. Admittedly, we’re one company included in the 80%+ companies here in the Philippines that uses pirated software. We wanted to make everything legal and start clean. On the other hand, huge fees for per-seat software is too much for us to handle.
There wasn’t a team assigned to do this. Since I pretty much handle all the management of the company including the technical tools for the team, I am the only one who tested and decided on what to implement across the facilities.
Nothing detailed. I simply tested my self, using the linux distro on my own, then apply it to each workstation one by one. After 3 months, we’re done with the entire implementation.
I tested pretty much anything that I see good reviews on the internet. We were satisfied with Xandros when I came accross (K)Ubuntu and tested it on my machine. It turned out that Kubuntu is faster and stable.
Ironically, I’m on a Mac OSX machine now. This is because we need a mac machine for cross browser, cross platform testing for our projects — and I happen to be the one using it. Our designer is also using a Windows machine. Adobe Photoshop is more matured compared to GIMP, so we can’t let go of that.
Right now, I don’t have a figure for you. But it can be computed as 16 machines x around 40k pesos of licences.
Definitely. For instance, some added bonus for employees. The savings translated into motivation ;-)
Just the one machine with Windows/Adobe Photoshop. So that around P60k.
The easiest part is the “testing part”. I was like playing all month long when I was testing the distros. The hardest is when we start using it as a team. Somehow, Samba integration is hard to implement across the network. We encountered some file permission issues, among others. But with research and trial-and-error, we are able to pass through the hurdles.
Somehow, it made things a little easier. Most techies are excited about new things. Linux-based desktops are essentially new, so they were all excited to learn.
The sales people. Surprisingly, they did not experience difficulties. There are some items that they had to learn too. But since most of the know the solution already, they simply teach those with problems.
We have PCs from PII to P4. I think the slowest that we have is a sempron. But Kubuntu works good on it.
I have received reports of better desktop speed vs the MS Windows. It surprises me because all the while I thought Linux distros are bloated. There are some issues though on OpenOffice.org2 . Some said it loads slower than MS Office — which I think is true. But after it is loaded, OpenOffice works “just like MS Office” in almost all aspect of productivity. Ano, no, nobody seems to have missed Solitare :D
We maintain at least one Windows desktop in the network — and a Mac OS X — for cross platform verification.
Get your feet wet by installing Kubuntu to a used PC. Try to use it the way you use your typical office workstation. That’s the only way one can test Linux without disrupting the operation at the same time discovering whether Linux fits in their environment.
First of all, thanks a lot to Arnold for replying so promptly and candidly to my questions. There wasn’t anything special about the methodology or anything, other than maybe it’s important to note that I sent three emails instead of one long one, basically because nobody likes receiving a long list of questions (who likes answering questionnaires?), and also because I honestly really wouldn’t know what I’d ask at any one time, so I’d rather ask questions pending answers of others. It also comes out looking more natural that way.
Also, I took a rather shotgun approach to all this, as the topic of a successful Linux Migration, being rare, raises a lot of questions and hence can be mined for many different types of articles. To name a few:
- A Technical HowTo Article – The obvious type – A step by step on how it was done, with a timeline, people involved, and to make it especially interesting, starting all the way from how the decision to migrate came about.
- A Business Article Detailing Costs – Costs saved from the migration. The cost of the migration itself. Any possible unforeseen costs down the road (it can’t be all hunky dory, I’m sure there’s some cost involved in Linux even if small), their operating cost compared to the same period as last year (given Arnold would agree a peek at his operating expenses, but even rough amounts could suffice), and so on.
- A Business Article Detailing Management Decisions To Go Open Source – Granted, Arnold is a Managing Director, and so what he says pretty much goes, but still worth pursuing. It would also be interesting to interview managers in other SMB companies to ask them what they think of how things went at Sparrow.
- A Lifestyle / Techie / Human Resources Article re How the moving to Linux has affected the workplace – Requires an interview of staff, and would be very interesting again, as a Human Interest type of story (as opposed to a purely technical point of view, which surely we’ve had enough of).
.. to name a few.
Re the Seminar itself, I have to be honest – it was getting late, I was really really tired and I’m sure the guests were too. I don’t think I did as good a job as I should have. So I’ll do what comes naturally – blame it on something else :) – j/k, but honestly, I kind of felt almost embarrassed that I was keeping people from going out already, given they’ve been sitting there longer than I have (I arrived late), and there had been no breaks. So I think I rushed it. :(
Either that, or I suspect, I probably would never really feel comfortable talking about writing. Writing, see, is something so deeply close and dear to me, that it’s almost akin to talking about, say, someone who saved your life, without getting so wrapped up or all emo. I know that’s melodramatic, and if you’re starting to think that as you read this, then understand that that’s what I mean.
However, you can get me to talk about something technical, like installing WordPress or Drupal on Cpanel, or setting up a consulting company, or cleaning a carburator, and I’d probably nail it. But talking about writing? It’s like talking about my girlfriend to a roomfull of strangers. It was completely draining, I wasn’t sure of myself (and anyone who knows me well enough knows what an cocky SOB I really am. Dang that part of me didn’t come out. :) and afterwards I was so hungry I walked zombie like straight into Brother’s Burger Magallanes and got myself one of their enormous meals, which happened to be delicious btw.
Ok that’s enough self indulgence. I’ll be writing some of the articles I mentioned above based on my interview of Arnold soon, and publish it here and on the PLUG site.