The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit (4)

In the last post, I was talking about what I believe the next 3 to 5 years will have in store for us - business-wise. I talked about what I think is the start of the iPhone phenomenon in the entreprise. I then talked about dramatic changes in the server world, with Microsoft buying Zimbra, Ubuntu becoming the n.1 name in Linux, OS.X server getting through by the main door, and Google Apps/Zoho getting a substantial size of the SME market. In the third post I mentioned about the standard desktop PC falling to sub £299.

In this post, I will resume by talking about technology


Technology

1. There will be a huge fight between Facebook, Google, MySpace, Linkedin, to get into the entreprise with Facebook starting with a slight advantage. I am not sure who will the winner be after a while, as we might see consolidation and strong partnership developing, although I believe that Google's Open Standard for Social Network will position them extremely favourably.
2. SME's will EMBRACE Social Networking as the new means of collaboration (Facebook has already chat and document sharing capabilities) as it allows them to communicate much more efficiently than email - with strong selling points placed on malware protection, spam elimination, inviting ONLY your 'friends' and partners, etc.
3. Changes in the Wi-Fi/Wi-Max world will impact the telephony operators, mainly them looking for ways to beef up their 3G performance (4G?) to keep up with the connectivity demands of their customer (Internet access, social networking, video chat, etc.). Prices shouldn't necessarily come down (at least at the low end), but customers will get more for what they pay today (although the need for bandwidth and extras will level that out)...

Basically, social networking will evolve and we will see some market consolidations, but the concept and technology is here to stay. The need for privacy and security in the face of spam, viruses, and malware, will push many companies to use the 'intranet/extranet' paradigm of working. SMTP will continue as a transport mechanism although other protocols will run alongside it.

What it means, is that tomorrow giants will be Google (Orkut - currently number 1 worldwide), Facebook, Linkedin, etc, although large corporations will use their own flavour - possibly based on Open Source components - of Social Network. In this scenario, and providing Microsoft doesn't eventually buy them, Yahoo could have a few cards up their sleeve.

To conclude the series, I forecast very exciting coming years in the ICT world, where the shift that is starting right now - from desktop to cloud - will gain momentum and reshape the landscape.

If you want to talk financial:

• Cisco and Juniper are safe. We will always need what they sell. They have reached a critical mass like GE, which will always be there
• IBM, Apple, HP will be there. Each for its own set of reasons, but mainly they all have in common the fact that they are diversified, 'own' a lot of their end products (software, hardware, design, patents, etc.), have ahead thinking plans and simple delivery process, and create healthy ands faithful ecosystems around them
• Dell needs to depend less on Microsoft and get back to sell solid systems with great support if they want to survive. I think that selling Linux servers with a good margin is imperative to compete in the cut-throat area of cheap PCs/laptops
• Microsoft should never be written off, but the departure of Bill Gates has opened a psychological void. Whatever is thought of Bill Gates, he WAS the face of Microsoft, and when he spoke, people listened. Now that he is gone, there has been a worldwide shift about Microsoft perception. If Microsoft doesn't do something about its licensing issues, about a revamp of Exchange, about a less-hungry/less-bloated Operating System, we will see HUGE moves away to the Apple/Linux/Open Source camp. I expect the Vista/Office downard slide to continue and anticipate flat or negative quarters at least for another year.
• The mobile operators with the best ratio of network coverage/network performance/data price/contract attractiveness will gain dramatically. In the long term, I envisage (in the UK) 3/Vodaphone to struggle, O2/Orange to do very well, and T-Mobile to stay flat.
• The new kids on the block (although Google is hardly a new kid, but in the Social Networking it could be thought as one) are pulling all the stops. Which one, out of MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Linkedin, Gaia, DeviantArt will eat the other one, or be eaten, or just go out of business? One thing is sure, Google/Orkut is going up, and Yahoo is going up. Linked is most probably going up.

What do you think?

The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit (3)

In the last post, I was talking about what I believe the next 3 to 5 years will have in store for us - business-wise. I talked about what I think is the start of the iPhone phenomenon in the entreprise. I then talked about dramatic changes in the server world, with Microsoft buying Zimbra, Ubuntu becoming the n.1 name in Linux, OS.X server getting through by the main door, and Google Apps/Zoho getting a substantial size of the SME market.

In this post, I will resume by talking about the Desktop world


Desktop world

1. Companies like IBM, Sun, SalesForce, SAP, Cisco, etc. will come up in the next 2 years with an update to their products that will be Mac-as-on-PC and Linux-as-on-Windows compatible. They will make a BIG deal of it.
2. We will hear of big moves from XP to Mac or XP to Linux, this time not only limited to government agencies or charities, but also from reputable companies. Some moves will be triggered by a change of server technology (Apple Xserve, Linux), move of application technology to platform 'independent'(MsSQL to Oracle/MySQL,ProgresQL/etc) making dependance on Microsoft OS less attractive.
3. We will see a significant increase of sub-£299 laptop and sub-£200 desktop in the low end. They will mainly be running Linux or a streamlined (customized?) version of XP

The shift has already started: lBM has a large Mac platform pilot, Salesforce is moving to Macs, the eePC pioneered a sub-£299 PC/laptop concept that is now being followed by other manufacturers, etc.

What this means in the long term, is that Microsoft's vaporware Windows 7 has to take this trend into account in its design. If they want to sell at least as many copies of Windows 7 as Vista, they might have to delay its release until its specifications are slimmed down. It also mean that the couple AMD/ATI have better chances to greater market share than today, although the overall outlook would be for thinner margins - including for PC manufacturers.

I also see companies being prepared to partly subsidize a cheap laptop to their roaming employees, instead of purchasing a more expensive one that would be depreciated over 3 years.

In the next post, we will look at technology in general...

What do you think?

The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit (2)

In the last post, I was talking about what I believe the next 3 to 5 years will have in store for us - business-wise. I talked about what I think is the start of the iPhone phenomenon in the entreprise.

In this post, I will resume by talking about the Server world.

Server world

1. Leopard server being Apple's first really serious alternative to Microsoft servers (SBS, or other), the next release of OS.X server  - perhaps released by the end of this year, but most probably some time in 2009 - will be aggressively positioned to conquer the entreprise by offering: greater integration of PC's into Open Directory, native or quasi native support for Outlook client (mail AND calendar), entreprise-level Time-Machine backup facility, easy access to groupware from Windows Mobile, web access to personal calendar, entreprise management of iPhones, etc
   
2. Ubuntu will gain such a momentum that it will soon climb up the Linux ranks  to become the de-facto Linux distribution (like it did with the desktop). Ubuntu's partnership with Dell will help Dell's server systems switch from Windows to Linux in a significant measure, and gain interesting market share (HP should follow suit)
   
3. Microsoft might buy Zimbra, as it is today the biggest threat to their Exchange supremacy. They might use the Zimbra client to incorporate it into their next version of Windows as the default email client, and tightly integrate it to their Microsoft Live offering. Zimbra server technology will help them rebuild Exchange from scratch, getting rid of their database paradigm that is so penalizing to Exchange performance, and changing the licensing scheme to be more on par with the the rest of the industry prices. Microsoft will stop development of Zimbra to platforms other than Windows, quoting "a focusing of resources", etc
   
4. Google Apps for Business and Zoho will gain a lot more interest from SMEs to the point of causing real disruption to the business app manufacturers, with MsOffice starting to see significant slide in profit, and servers shifting from internal resource to outsourced
   

It is generally agreed that customers are getting really unhappy with Microsoft licensing schemes. Even a 'simple' product like SBS - which a small business may be interested in - usually comes with 5 user-licenses only, pushing the customer to purchase additional license for every new user/PC, to the limit of 75 users; at this point the organization has to migrate to full versions of Server 2X + Exchange 2X + Sharepoint 2X + SQL Server 2X, with all its issues added to the dangers of integration, of having multiple servers, etc.

I believe that the increase of iPhone and Mac sales in the entreprise - as witnessed recently and well documented - will get many CIOs and senior executive to ask their IT department to look at Apple server. I think that the decision makers out there will be more interested than ever in the real ROI, cost saving per user, and growth capability. Hardened Windows-only ICT Managers will find it harder and harder to defend their 'cheaper administration, cheaper administrative staff' stance, as a couple of Xservers can easily replace two or three Windows server in performance and scalability, for a drastically lower cost.

The rise of Ubuntu is a given. Whether the distribution is better or worse than other more established names is quite irrelevant here. Ubuntu is the name that is irresistibly growing. On the net - except for paid search - it comes first in Linux search, and also Linux server. For the anti-Mac clan, Ubuntu will be a credible alternative. I expect the company to come up with significant partnerships and announcements that will see it get even more positive publicity than today. Dell is already a partner and will be eager to expand its range into the server market for a very compelling price while keeping good margins. Dell only need a couple of high profile sales to see interest in its Ubuntu offering grow significantly.

Although all the talk is on Microsoft mesh, Live, and other on-line acronyms, Exchange/Sharepoint and Office are his bread and butter business. I concede that Microsoft buying Zimbra may be hard to believe for some, but I think that would be a smart move on their part: Zimbra has now a substantial user-base, it has a first class AJAX client - that Microsoft staff like, as disclosed in other blogs earlier on - and has a very modular architecture (zimlets); the server communicates with Outlook, has hooks for VOIP, is very fast and scalable, can be hosted, and is taking business away from Exchange. In truth, Exchange cannot really compete with Zimbra, because it is a dog to run, has a so and so management tool set, and Zimbra has an incredibly talented and forward thinking team of designers and programmers. It's a no-brainer.

Google Apps for businesses is a very nice product. You can assign your domain name to it, you can manage groups, users, email addresses, sharing, and other useful things using an easy interface, from anywhere in the world. Your users can use the built-in word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, and save them in multiple formats (PDF included), or you can use your company's applications (MsWord, OpenOffice, iWorks, etc.). You can create a customized 'portal', multiple group calendars, and a chat network. An you are not platform limited; you can enter data from IE7 on a tablet-PC, modify a document from a Safari on a Mac or Firefox on a Linux PC. I think that it has all the functionalities that 75% of people will ever use. The tipping point will be when third party developers or Open Source programmers will start using Google Gear and the APIs to get their applications to integrate with Google Apps in a big way. I see this happening within the next 2 years, under the impulse of an aggressive Google. A typical small businesses only has to look after a gateway device (with DHCP), a cheap firewall, a good broadband SLA, and a few cheap PCs to get, and keep, going. The savings are impressive, and for disaster recovery you can keep going from anywhere!

In the next post, we will look at the Desktop arena...

What do you think?

The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit

This article from business week was the catalyst for a brainwave. When I read this great piece, I was struck at how accurate my uptakes on the next 2 years were, when I made them to my manager sometime in September/October 2006. I made other comments at the time, which were not covered by the magazine cover story, but were just as close to how things turned out. The conversations I had at the time were in the light of where I saw the market going to.

After reading the article I sat down to write a quick email containing quick 15 predictions of the market in the next 3 to 5 years and forwarded it to some selected friends and colleagues.

I decided to copy them into this blog. Although my predictions were written in no specific order at first, I had to organize them into superficial and subjective categories for readability sake, and although I discovered afterwards that I had about 5 more points to jog down, I decided not to write them after all - at least in the short term - to stay as close as possible to the email content.

The iPhone

1. The iPhone 2.0 is coming out in June, perhaps with 3G straight away or maybe later this year, and within a few weeks/months, 'serious' business software will appear for it
2. We'll hear of large companies using the iPhone for business critical applications this year
3. RIM's blackberry will certainly struggle and have its shares down quite substantially over a period of time
4. Microsoft's Windows Mobile will also struggle in the higher end phones, as it won't offer anything comparable or better than the iPhone. They might keep it alive for a few years through their largest corporate accounts, but may pull out of it in the next 5 years
5. Sony/Erikson, Nokia, and others will rush to get Symbian phones and/or Linux/Android phones to match the iPhone capabilities but will have first generation problems (performance, bugs, etc.) and may end up concentrating on the already saturated low end by offering much higher specs phones for the same price to get people to switch. However within 2 years, they should have ironed the kinks of higher end phones and could offer an alternative to the iPhone. The rate of this change will depend, of course, on whether Apple decide to stick to their one operator per country policy, and not allow operators to subsidize the iPhone
   

Yep! I definitely believe that the iPhone 'second generation' will take the business world by storm - and I'm not even talking about the consumer market where end-users will crave for the games and cool software applications that are going to be made available - as the device will gain the respectability status it only had implicitly. The mixture of the iPhone controlled environment, classy graphics, corporate email management, storage size, and applications, will become too strong a pull for most businesses to resist. Here is a phone/PDA running an OS with free updates, which none of the competitors can properly offer.

next post will discuss the Server world...

What do you think?

     

Gadget or useful PC?

On Monday I went to PC World in Meadowhall to show a friend the range of end-user laptops or desktops that are out there in main retailers. We ended up purchasing a power supply, which I diagnosed as dead and was the reason why my friend's desktop PC was not working. We also asked PC World staff to swap the power supplies for us, which they did for a good price. In the end, my friend didn't leave with a new PC, but went away happy, after getting his old desktop PC back from the dead for a mere £79.

While the PC was being repaired, I went back to the laptop section to have a look at the Asus eePC, that so many magazines write about.

These are my impressions and comment.

The first thing one notices about the eePC is its size, of course. Its screen size is only 7" diagonal, which makes you instantly think that you will not be able to see anything.


Display

Contrary to the first impression, the display is good. For sure, you cannot work on the eePC at full arm length, but in a standard position, reading what is on the screen is fine. I created a spreadsheet document to enter figures and found the display pleasant. It 'only' has a resolution of 800x600, which may, from what I've read in posts around the web, be a problem with long and windy dialog boxes, although I also read that there are key combinations that allow you to view them anyway. Personally, I liked the display.


Interface

Having extended experience of Ubuntu and having tested gOS for a while, I am used to non-Windows-looking interfaces. The eePC's custom Linux GUI is intuitive and pleasant. When you boot the machine, you are shown a 'desktop' with tabs: Internet, Word, Media, Games (if I remember correctly). Each tab's window has nicely arranged icons representing applications (Eg. Email, documents, spreadsheets, etc.). As in Ubuntu, small icons at the top of the screen will display status of services such as Network/Wifi, Time, etc. All in all, very intuitive and easy to use for first time computer user, Windows-specialists, Mac-enthusiasts, or Linux-experienced.


Keyboard

There's no doubt about it, it's small. For one, it's no way as small as smartphone keyboard. And second, it is surprisingly easy to type with, even for someone with big ad short fingers like me. At first I got the usual wrong characters in, but after a few minutes, I could type quite fast and precisely. Pressing the keys feel fine, a little like the keys on the iMac's older keyboards. All in all, it was like working with a laptop - albeit a small one...


Responsiveness

I thought that the performances were good. I plugged in my 4gb pen drive and went through the file manager to find an Excel and a Word documents, to check the OpenOffice implementation. The file manager saw my pen drive very quickly, and one I clicked on the files, OpenOffice started in seconds. And that's only on a 512mb of RAM machine! I poked around the machine, opened a host of applications (after closing others), and was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the eePC.


Other

• The eePC is light, really light. You can hold it in one hand and move it around. That's a real bonus
• The eePC has a built-in camera. Didn't test it, but it should prove very useful for iChat-type of communication
• I could see 2 USB ports, which is good. I also saw a SD card reader, and an Internet port

Conclusion

Even though I didn't test the eePC at length (lucky journalist who can do that for a living), the time I spent with it was enough to convince me that it is a useful PC, and not a gadget. I just read this morning that HP are entering the market with their own lightweight model, which goes on to show that Asus got it right when they ventured in this direction. I will personally recommend this product to people who don't have a PC and want to go on the net, students who need to research and take notes on the go, and companies who want to offer easy-to-use laptops to their staff. For £299, you cannot go really wrong.

Ironing the Mac kinks

In an earlier post, I mentioned about two issues that were real show stoppers for objectively giving my seal of approval to the Mac platform as a full member of our current Windows 2003 domain.

Although I believe moving from today's setting to a Leopard (or later) Open Directory domain in the future will be of the utmost benefit - at least in license cost and network stability - the fact is that today we are using Windows server technology.

We have two heavy-duty Infotec printers that do not have a postscript interpreter module. The Windows driver allows a user to enter a department code that allows printing and bills the department. I couldn't find such driver for non-windows systems.
Yesterday I installed a ppd file, and some 'utilities' (I wll name it like that for the sake of speed). I modified the ppd file by hand to enter my codes. I did a test print, and was so excited when I picked up the page from the printer. Leopard IS amazing!

The other problem I had was with Excel spreadsheets that are important to us, as they contains complex formulas to do some of our finance control. Each department enters its data, and the calculations need to be precise.

Each time I opened one the spreadsheet in OpenOffice or NeoOffice, I get an error on some of the formulas. For a long time, I thought it was a bug. That was until I read the details of the latest release of OO and found that it now completely read Excel macros (prior to Office 2003?). So I decided to investigate. It took me a long time to realize that Excel accepted a sun over 2 colums in an erroneous array in its SUMIF function, where OO correctly singled out the error (although the message was a cryptic ERR:504). As soon as I changed the formula to perform its sum over 1 column only, all the resulting formulas calculated as they should. Magic!

So here we are. The only last hurdle is the ability to run Sage in Wine/Darwine. Has anybody made it work?

Google and ADrive

Yesterday I did some clean up.

I had documents on the server, on my local account, and in different places. Although they are all quite neatly arranged in folders (work, personal, to read, etc.), I wanted a single repository I could access from anywhere. Sure, we have controlled access to our resources internally and externally through our 'portal' - a PC running SSL-Explorer, which is a very useful piece of software. But, I was not satisfied because, unless you implement a solution which costs more than I was prepared to pay, there are many points of failure along the way: your router, the SSL-Explorer PC, your server, etc.

So, once I had shrunk my document system to a single copy on the server, I copied everything on Google Docs and ADrive.

Now, I didn't know about ADrive until I wanted to upload my PDF documents to Google Docs, which, of course is not possible. I was very surprised to read a help response from a Google technician who recommended ADrive. How professional and helpful! So I went to the ADrive web site and was amazed to see that you can store up to 50GB of documents for free.

Google Docs

In typical Google fashion, Google Docs look neat, tidy, and unobtrusive. You can, of course, search documents, and have access to all the other Google applications. I instantly took a liking to it.

Uploading a document in Google Docs is very easy and you can do it in batch mode by sending an email to a personal address with your documents attached. Google Docs swallowed all my Word, Excel, Powerpoint, text, and RTF files. I then created folders to reflect my previous filing system and then 'moved' the files to the folder. I don't think the files are actually moved anywhere but tagged, very much like you tag an email in GMail, but the end result is the same, as when you go to the tag/folder you only see the relevant documents.

Click on a document it will be displayed in a new window/tab with all the options for an update.

If you choose to check the box placed before the document name instead, you have a choice of options: Share, Move, Publish, Hide, Delete, Rename, and... More Actions.

More Actions is very neat. It gives the possibility of saving a document in different format. The new format is PDF, and this alone is a great feature, as it is a fast and cheap way to convert a document to PDF if you don't have a Mac.

ADrive

Registering to ADrive is very easy: just fill in a few details, wait for an email registration detail, and when clicking on it, you're good to go straight away.

ADrive's interface is more cluttered than Google's, with more adverts and a smaller main window (as in many 'modern' web sites), but it is functional.

Uploading documents is performed via the browser only, but it is so easy to use that it's not a downside. In fact, if you select a folder instead of a file, the folder is uploaded with all the documents inside it. Extremely neat and fast! Although you can upload more than one folder/document at a time, which is a great time saver. It looks as if folders are real folders, and that documents are actually moved between folders, instead of the tag paradigm, but it may be that it is more an interface thing, I can't tell.

Click on a document, and the browser will download it to be used with a local application (Preview/PDF-Reader, Word, Excel, OpenOffice, etc.). You can choose instead to click on the EDIT button situated in line with the document name, and the document - if editable (PDFs are not) - will be opened in the same Window using a Zoho app.

For actions on an individual document, you click on a button situated in line with its name: Download, Edit, Share, Rename, Move, Delete. If you want to apply an action to a group of documents, you click on the Select button, which took me a little while to grasp, as I am so used to check-marks... For multiple documents, your options are to Clear (your selection), Delete, Move, and Share.

Overall comment

Rather than focusing on ADrive's shortcomings, compared to Google Docs, Zoho, or Xcellery, I am very comfortable with the product, because it is, to me, the perfect respository for documents of all sorts. It is an amazingly cheap backup facility, and more. It may be functional and no-frills, but it works, ad works well. I like it.

Some could complain that the Google Docs applications may not be as sleek and powerful as Xcellery's or Zoho's, but I don't mind. First, because it is part of Google apps: GMail, Google Calendar, and others are easily reachable from the links at the top of the page. Second, I love the Save As capability and how easy it is to use it. And finally, I find the apps enough for my needs, I like the simple interface. This is why Google Docs has now become my number one 'live' document system, coupled with ADrive which I use as a repository of all tings documents and and for archiving.

Notes

ADrive has a useful time-out facility, in case I forget to close my browser. Google Calendar flawlessly imported my ICal file and is now becoming my default calendar - even for work items, as I can finegrain my publishing options.

I welcome all comments

Microsoft's OOXML seems to be ratified as an ISO standard

Like many people who fight for being able to use any desktop platform I take this piece of news as a setback. I read many blogs and posts on the web and there is a lot of acrimony out there between the defenders of choice and innovation and...well, everyone else. I feel so strongly about this issue that I want to rant a little.

Innovation, what innovation?

First, just the utterance of this word gets me going; innovation, the buzz word from marketing, the generic term of IT sales. But when you look at it with a hint of reality, what innovation are people talking about?

When one looks at the history of the MsOffice application, not a lot has really changed since the days of Office 97. The file format has not changed too much either. The truth is that competitors haven't either (until the introduction of Apple's iWork). I can be bold enough to say that in fact Excel or Word have not functionally changed much since its first introduction of Windows 3, although Microsoft has changed menus many times for no apparent reason. The proprietary doc, xls, and ppt, formats have slowly evolved but not to the point of qualifying them 'innovative'.

When a choice of standards is bad

Secondly, I read a lot of comments from advocates of 'choice of standards', and each time I was greatly unconvinced. To start with, multiple standards is an oxymoron. A standard is a standard is a standard.
For those traveling abroad, we know what the advocacy of 'multiple standards' mean: travel-kit for phone socket, travel-kit for electrical socket, transformer, multi-band mobile phone, etc. Each country or region talks about the benefits of its 'choice' of standard.

T-Base-x is a standard, so is 802.11, yet they did 'innovate' - build-on.

Is ODF bad?

OOXML does NOT build on anything. It comes as a competitor to ODF. It does NOT enhance it, it is not compatible with it. I find that the worst part of this subject, is the hypocrisy of everyone claiming that it's about fair competition.

Microsoft REFUSED to implement, and HAS NOT implemented, proper native ODF format (although a standard) in their MsOffice suite.

Their excuse is the worst example of cynical lying: "ODF is not rich enough". ODF is already as rich or richer than the doc or xls format.
ODF is open, so NOTHING can prevent Microsoft from implementing it.

Some people chose to forget the above to pinpoint some 'shortcomings' of ODF. Sorry but that doesn't add-up. ODF is not perfect, but standards evolve (as 802.11 did and still does). Many web frameworks and applications have ODF compatibility - whether natively or via plug-in, and more are coming every day.

Microsoft strategy

I think it is pretty clear to guess Microsoft's strategy: make OOXML the de-facto standard for office document.

1. All new MsOffice application will open/save documents in OOXML format by default; CIO's and lazy IT Managers will feel justified to upgrade/update as-is because of the 'standard' label
2. Businesses and government agencies having adopted the standard for office open common format (ODF), will now have the headache of having to cope with demands from those claiming to use the choice standard (OOXML), and will find it hard to justify staying with ODF
   
3. Microsoft will change the specifications of OOXML on each release of their applications, and post (perhaps) their changes to the ISO for the competitors to play catch up (or post them much later, only when competitors complain of compatibility issues).

Why would Microsoft act like this

Whether Microsoft's OOXML is a good set of specifications is not the point at this time.

There WAS an existing standard that Microsoft NEVER implemented because it would put them on a playing field with everyone else, and they know they can't win on features (90% of users only use a maximum of 20% of Office features, which other applications have anyway) or justify the high cost of their suite.

I don't buy into the conspiracy theory that says that Microsoft is besieged by hordes of competition-or-innovation-haters. It's actually the opposite and Microsoft has been found guilty of improper business conduct over and over again - and not just by Europe. Many people have grown distrustful of the company that claims to innovate or champion choice, yet stifle the innovating competitors by spiteful or illegal means.

All Microsoft need to do is walk the walk and talk the talk for a while, but unfortunately, as in the case of OOXML, it has chosen not to do so.

MacMini and Leopard server

So much happened since I last posted on the blog!

We purchased a Macmini to test Leopard Server and its new groupware features, and compare it to Windows 2003 server with Exchange and Sharepoint.

The Macmini is an amazing PC. For just £360, it is an incredible value. Up until now, we have set aside a budget of £450 per PC that we purchase (including monitor). We are talking branded PC from HP or Lenovo. Nothing fancy but good runner, with adequate specifications.
The MacMini is at least just as good, only smaller and incredibly quieter. Coupled with a a USB keyboard and mouse (or with an adaptor), and a standard monitor, it does the business, and more.

What's not to like about Leopard server? I have installed and manager Windows server for many years, from NT 3.5 to W2003 and I have installed Exchange from its humble beginnings to Entreprise 2003. I liked SBS 2003 most and thought it was a nice and easy product. That was until I started dealing with Leopard Server. As an experienced techie, I found it easy to understand and manage; very intuitive. The most amazing is that, for the first time, I could have a truly integrated platform, with Mac and Windows XP clients feeding from Open Directory as if - in the case of XP - they were on a Windows domain.

The thing that blew my mind, as an IT Manager, is the possibility of having any mainstream client platform happily working. Linux and Evolution, Windows and Thunderbird/Lightning, and of course Macs and Mail/iCal. And that is not all. A user can have multiple calendars on the server and have them all displayed at the same time, which is not easy or intuitive with Exchange/Outlook. The cherry on the cake was the ability to subsribe to a group calendar, and view all the calendars at once in a clear way.

As an Administrator I was so taken aback by the ease of setting up anti-virus/anti-spam software for all emails. I was showing all the tech guys how I could perform all admin tasks with only 2 applications (Server Manager and Workgroup Manager), as opposed to Active Directory, Exchange, IIS, DHCP, DNS, etc. (I know they can all be found together in a custom Management console, but it's extra work, and it's not as nicely laid-out)

I would describe my Leopard server configuration 'cheeky'. I made it part of the AD domain, could access all the users and groups through Workgroup Manager, and set them up with all the resources they needed from Leopard - from email and calendar to file share. By playing with DNS and DHCP I was able to create a completely new 'domain' that the original Windows 2003 servers knew nothing about, yet clients were moving back and forth between servers without the faintest idea that they were actually talking to a Mac server not running Exchange or Sharepoint.

Having proven my point, the Macmini is back to being a client PC, running Leopard and NeoOffice. As I don't need my calendars on the server, I use Apple Mail because of its useful utilities, and iCal because it's neat. I tested Darwine to run Office 2003, which I thought was OK (I prefer NeoOffice).

There are hurdles, still. The first one is the fact that Sage won't run under Darwine - even when it seems it installed correctly. If anyone knows how to make it work, I would be eternelly grateful, to hear from you. The second issue I have is an issue with Excel; NeoOffice does a great job, but some of the finance spreadsheet are quite complex and some links are not automatically updated and cells will give an error (ERR:504 on a SUMIF function with arrays); this is a real show stopper. Finally, we have Infotec printer (2525 and 2838) that are PCL/PXL only and use a user code for printing; the ppd file does not seem to work properly enough to allow printing.

However, overall, the combination of Macmini and Leopard makes for a more productive day and more enjoyable computing experience. That is invaluable.