[plug] Mac -> Linux? - long!

Grant Malcolm gmalcolm at cygnus.uwa.edu.au
Mon Sep 11 11:09:11 WST 2000


Small office environment - 12 Macs. We're not a DTP bureau, but a
community service agency. 

http://www.wantree.com.au/~recnet

Management is fed up with:

	a) poor performance from current ethernet network
	b) problems exchanging files internally & externally
	c) no workgroup software (shared calendar/scheduling/contacts)
	d) no common hardware or software standard within office

Other significant issues include the fact that most new staff are arriving
with Wintel skills and we've had difficulties obtaining ready and
affordable Mac support and training. The organisation may consider
appointing a very part-time IT support/sys admin person. 

Significant applications in use:

	FileMaker Pro for Mac
	- most of the organisation runs on this 
	MS Word/MS Works/Claris Works/Apple Works
	MS Excel
	PageMaker 6.52
	Photoshop 4
	NS/IE 4+
	MS Outlook

We've had a systems consultant in whose off-the-shelf solution has been to
suggest outfitting us all with PCs running win2k & msoffice and install an
nt server with contact management and scheduling software.

:(

i asked the consultant about open source alternatives. he felt using
"non-standard" (i.e. non-MS) applications would only exacerbate issues
related to support and exchanging files with external agencies. 

My feelings? As a not-for-profit organisation we're focused on providing
maximum support to our "clients". We need IT solutions that operate as
transparently as possible. Our staff are not IT professionals and even
asking them to remember to save a .doc extension on documents they are
emailing to win-based colleagues has proved too problematical!

Our client management system has been developed on FileMaker for Mac. 
It's a moderately complex contact management system.  Some of our staff
will not cope with even minor modifications to screen layouts and would
require retraining. However, we know it can be dropped on a disk and run
under FileMaker for windows without any alteration.

Moving to an MS environment would appear to deliver transparent ease of
operation for them.

I'm horrified at the prospect! While i've been dabbling with Linux for a
couple of years, i've just managed to reach a point where my home pc
hasn't booted windows for three months - even my wife is using it! Now i
might be forced to used the blighted MS at work.

There is a window of opportunity here for Linux with our organisation.
With what we'd save on purchasing proprietary software, we could probably
afford to completely revamp all of the existing applications developed for
FileMaker.

I don't think a shoot out or price war between the MS consultant currently
working on this and a Linux consultant is likely to win out here. However,
if there were a Linux advocate/s interested in working with this MS guy,
there maybe an opportunity to win our business and a new convert to open
source alternatives. 

Suggestions?

Cheers
Grant

PS. apologies for the length of this ramble!

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