RE: Gartner Group: DO NOT USE IIS!

["Walden H. Leverich" <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This time I'm not simply taking the pro-MS stance, honest! <G>

1) You shouldn't be allowed to run SMTP and POP3 internally! If you're
allowed to run SMTP outbound how is the company to monitor e-mail? What
about virus scanning? Perhaps the footer the legal department puts on each
outbound e-mail. Also, do you, the desktop user, understand the network
architecture? There may be reasons that you can't send e-mail from your
location and it's must be routed through another location.

As for POP3, it sucks! It's extremely good at MOVING messages from the
server to your PC. Now since you, of course, backup your pc every night
there is no problem recovering messages when you crash your pc. Also you, of
course, run a web server on your pc with the appropriate holes in the
firewall to allow you to access all these locally stored messages from any
web server in the world, right? How about viruses, you have the latest virus
software rescan every message in your private message store when the virus
definitions are updated, right? Finally, what about storage? A centralized
copy of an e-mail to 30 people with an 1 meg attachment takes 1 meg to
store, if every person downloads a copy it takes 30 meg. Leave e-mail on a
centralized server where it belongs. Now if you want to talk IMAP maybe I'll
listen, but the reality is that everyone uses POP3 not IMAP.

2) RFCs and standards won't obviate the Office 97/2K/XP format problem. MS
doesn't change formats just to annoy people, they change them to include new
features in the document. If you need to change the document layout to
accommodate a feature you'll break old code, period, I don't care if the
format was MS's proprietary one or one found in RFC123456. Yes, we can argue
about ways to go about making changes backwards compatible, but come on, at
some point you give up and say, move forward everyone. After all, were not
all using ASCII text for our documents, that that was a standard.

-Walden

------------
Walden H Leverich III
President
Tech Software
(516)627-3800 x11
WaldenL@TechSoftInc.com
http://www.TechSoftInc.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Goodbar, Loyd (AFS-Water Valley) [mailto:LGoodbar@afs.bwauto.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 11:40 AM
To: 'midrange-l@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: Gartner Group: DO NOT USE IIS!


Absolutely!

I would like to start working with Evolution (www.ximian.com) as it looks to
be a decent Outlook workalike. I have not had the opportunity to upgrade the
one Linux box I play with at work to run Evolution. The thing that kills
this currently is the fact that we run totally on Exchange site connectors
and MAPI internally. We are prohibited from running POP3 & STMP within the
company. The only SMTP-enabled server is our Exchange email gateway at
division HQ.

The "other" problem that plagues alternative solutions is second-running.
Remember when Office 97 came out (I think) that changed document file
formats? Everyone was in a mad rush to upgrade to O97 just to remain
compatible. People do NOT use the "save as" feature to make their documents
readable by others. "If I use Office XP, by golly everyone I communicate
with should be using Office XP too!" As long as a single company pushes
proprietary file or protocol formats, alternative solutions are always
running to stand still.

Things definitely look better in the server market. As long as we have open
standard and documented RFCs, everyone can interoperate. Samba is a
wonderful program, and is a vital necessity for Windows interoperability.
Webmin is a decent graphical administration tool.

People absolutely balk at the cost of our AS/400 (well, maybe not people on
this list...). We were working through a disaster recovery/insurance plan,
and we guestimated the replacement cost for just the AS/400 and OS are about
$300K-$400K (model 720 uniprocessor with 1GB core and 80GB storage, +
accessories). Then our network admin points to the 8 $5K-$8K NT/2000 servers
they have, and wonder why the 400 costs so much. They forget that OS/400
comes with a free industrial-strength, enterprise ready database, and that
we purchased an unlimited user license for the OS. (The price does not
include vendor software.) We also make up for our cost by having only one
system to administer rather than 8, no rebooting the system, no memory
leaks, very well scheduled maintenance to apply PTFs (no, I would NOT like
to reboot now), don't need to Windows update 8 systems, etc etc etc.

I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, just trying to highlight
reasons why we are in the shape we're in. Too bad egos and corporate culture
make it difficult to use the best solution for the job. Fini.

Loyd

P.S. Client Access under WINE... am interesting thought.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wills, Mike N. (TC) [mailto:MNWills@taylorcorp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 9:49 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Gartner Group: DO NOT USE IIS!


Loyd,

The point is more on the server side rather than the desktop side. I fully
agree with everything you said about the desktop side, even linux people are
saying that Linux is not ready for mainstream desktops. But there are two
projects out there to do what Outlook does. I believe there is Cyrix
support. There are other CAD programs that run under a Unix environment (I
know AutoCAD is _VERY_ expensive). Office packages? StarOffice, OpenOffice,
and AplixWare, and don't forget about the Corel Office Suite. For everything
else, it can be tested under Wine. But, you don't have to convert all
workstations.

However, on the server side, most everything is can be done through Linux,
they even have the pretty GUI interfaces for all of the configuration files.
With the exception of what Exchange does for email, but then you can use
Domino on the 400 for that, at least I think that has everything needed.
Samba can perform as a Primary Domain Controller, or Secondary. It also does
Windows file sharing and user authentication. Databases? There are quite a
few of those.

There, an answer for every question! I am not arguing, just stating the
facts.

Mike
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