Cold calls -- a new low

Ed Foster's weblog entry on "cold calls" is amazingly timely. Earlier today, I witnessed the most pernicious manifestation of cold calling I think I've seen to date. A few minutes after taking a look at the web hosting offerings on rackspace.com (I'm considering buying some server space to host a personal site), I got a surprise pop-up chat window from "Josh," a RackSpace sales rep -- right in front of the e-mail I was writing (the rackspace.com page was still in the background). I was startled. The transcript went something like this (I paraphrase -- the window closed before I could do a screen capture, but the impersonal label "You" did represent my side of the "conversation"):

Josh: Hello, what brought you to RackSpace.com today? 

You: Is this real? 

Josh: Yes, this is real. 

You: How long has RackSpace.com been doing this? 

Josh: a while :) 

You: Well, I'm just looking around. Thanks. 

I've heard some good things about RackSpace.com, but if their other potential customers are anything like me, this approach is just going to creep them out. I think maybe it's time to transfer "Josh" back to telemarketing where people like me can at least screen their calls.

Perhaps RackSpace.com has taken this "markets are conversations" business too far.

More open source databases

I got a nice e-mail from Ron Murawski, who appreciated the coverage of open source databases in my last column, and Ron added some to my short list of MySQL and PostgreSQL.  I was aware of most on the list, but didn't include them due to lack of space in the magazine (oh, the discipline of print!)  One on the list is a total surprise.  From Ron's e-mail:

FireBird [knew about this as Interbase. -CD]

In August 2000, Borland Software Corp. (formerly known as Inprise) released the beta version of InterBase 6.0 as open source. FireBird is the result.
homepage: http://firebird.sourceforge.net/
capabilities: http://firebird.sourceforge.net/index.php?op=guide&id=ib6_overview

SAP DB [I didn't know anything about this until the MySQL/SAP announcement this week. -CD]

Yes, SAP!!! They open-sourced a GPLed version of their flagship DB.
homepage: http://www.sapdb.org/
Now there's a partnership with MySQL that's brewing [I was aware of this from reading InfoWorld, of course. -CD]. See: http://www.sapdb.org/7.4/pdf/pressrelease_eng.pdf

Berkeley DB [Jon Udell wrote about Berkeley DB and Sleepycat here among other places and pointed to John Merell's weblog, who is on the team developing Berkeley DB XML.  -CD]

It's not SQL, but if it's high-speed you need, then this industrial-strength DB will cook. Although this DB is associated with Unix / Linux, there are Windows products available.
homepage: http://www.sleepycat.com/
It's offered in four flavors, see: http://www.sleepycat.com/products/sidebyside.shtml

Ocelot SQL DBMS  [This one was completely new to me. -CD]

Ocelot is an almost unknown Open Source SQL DB for Windows platforms only.
homepage: http://www.ocelot.ca/
Here's a quote from the site: "on this site, you can download, absolutely free, THE OCELOT SQL DBMS. This is an uncrippled SQL:1999 database management system, an official implementation of ISO standard SQL and ANSI standard SQL. For MS-Windows 95/98/Me/NT. The biggest user is a 3000-site German insurance company running 24x7."

Thanks, Ron.

There's always FreeBSD, folks

You know, if the Linux world came crashing down based on the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit (and I don't think it will), I would just migrate all of our apps to FreeBSD and use the Linux Binary Capability feature to run any old Linux-specific apps.  I can't think of anything I'm running on Linux that wouldn't run just as well on FreeBSD anyway.  From freebsd.org:

FreeBSD provides binary compatibility with several other Unix-like operating systems, including Linux. At this point, you may be asking yourself why exactly, does FreeBSD need to be able to run Linux binaries? The answer to that question is quite simple. Many companies and developers develop only for Linux, since it is the latest ``hot thing'' in the computing world. That leaves the rest of us FreeBSD users bugging these same companies and developers to put out native FreeBSD versions of their applications. The problem is, that most of these companies do not really realize how many people would use their product if there were FreeBSD versions too, and most continue to only develop for Linux. So what is a FreeBSD user to do? This is where the Linux binary compatibility of FreeBSD comes into play.

In a nutshell, the compatibility allows FreeBSD users to run about 90% of all Linux applications without modification. This includes applications such as Star Office, the Linux version of Netscape, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer 5 and 7, VMWare, Oracle, WordPerfect, Doom, Quake, and more. It is also reported that in some situations, Linux binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do under Linux.

There are, however, some Linux-specific operating system features that are not supported under FreeBSD. Linux binaries will not work on FreeBSD if they overly use the Linux /proc file system (which is different from FreeBSD's /proc file system), or i386-specific calls, such as enabling virtual 8086 mode.  [more here]

Incidentally, when I wrote this week's column ("Beyond Linux"), I wasn't even thinking about the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit, but using a non-GPL OS like FreeBSD certainly keeps you legally free and clear.   The courts might conceivably be able to kill Linux, but not the whole idea of a free high-performance Unix-like OS.

If the glass slipper fits

It's been an extremely busy and travel-heavy couple of weeks and blogging output has clearly suffered.  For some reason, I have trouble writing unless I'm sitting at a proper desk, so all the time spent in airplanes and airports recently just hasn't been conducive to writing.  It's good to be back on the ground for a while.

This week's column comments on what I see as an unnecessarily defensive posture among open source advocates:

After two years of writing this column, one theme in the feedback I receive from readers stands out. Regardless of what I write, I get at least a few e-mails saying, "You're short-changing open source." In my day-to-day IT reality, open source technologies play a central role: infoworld.com runs Linux/Apache, I use MySQL inside and outside of work for fun, and I keep up with less-hyped but mature technologies such as FreeBSD and PostgresSQL. I've been a Linux user since 1994. All that aside, what really interests me about these e-mails is the notion that the open source community continues to see itself as the Cinderella held back by an assortment of wicked stepmothers, principally Microsoft. From my vantage point, the opposite is true. Open source is the belle of the ball. The open source pumpkin has changed into a carriage and Cinderella is dancing with Prince Charming -- but the night is still young.  [full text here]

Some open source advocates remind me of underground music fans.  We've all known someone who was a big fan of a relatively unknown underground band that became more mainstream (Nirvana, for example).  As soon as the rest of the world catches up to the greatness of this unknown band, the earlier fans grow uncomfortable with the band's mainstream success and they either move on to a new stable of obscure bands, or they relentlessly remind you of how they were there at the beginning.   (And yes, I did note in my column that I've been using Linux since almost the beginning, so hey, I'm guilty to some degree myself.)  Of course, these advocates do serve a valuable function -- making sure that no one forgets the humble origins of the band and how long and hard they had to scrap to make it to the top (at least in pre-American Idol days, that was true).   Regardless of how successful Linux, MySQL, et. al. get, we certainly do need people to remind us how these things came to be.

 

My name is Chad -- and I'm a Technorati-aholic

Hi, my name is Chad, and I'm addicted to Technorati.  I used to pound the "Get Msgs" button on my Mozilla Mail client constantly, but now, I find myself rushing to my office between meetings to check the Technorati watchlist I set up for InfoWorld.com instead.  I thought my enthusiasm would wane after the first few weeks of using Technorati, but it hasn't.  Technorati's glimpse into the blog world borders on omniscience.   Technorati makes me smarter. 

Thank you, David Sifry.  You could wean people from crack with this stuff.

The battle for decentralization

In my InfoWorld column this week, I write about the forces of decentralization within traditional IT (thanks to SB Chatterjee for kindly referring to the column as "precision-guided journalism"): 

The days of the paternalistic top-down IT department are nearly gone. My message to chief technologists everywhere: Your users have left the nest; the best thing you can do is hope they make the right choices and occasionally call you for advice.

For now, you can try to keep your employees on a cluster of centrally managed Lotus Notes servers for "collaboration," but once they take 10 minutes to download and install Groove Workspace, they will ultimately self-organize within "shared spaces" that require no server -- and your role as collaboration traffic cop will quickly become irrelevant. You can forbid IM within your company, but savvy users will figure out how to tunnel IM through open ports in your firewall and bypass any tiresome finger-wagging by IT guards on security watch. You can make open-source software off limits to your own developers, but they will likely build much-needed apps leveraging the distributed development model of MySQL while you're yawning through the inevitable Gartner "magic quadrant" slide a half-hour into a proprietary database vendor's presentation. Didn't the rise of Linux teach everyone a lesson? [full text]

The decentralization genie really is out of the bottle, and it's the duty of IT managers to embrace it and make the most of it, because it really is an opportunity; however, it does require some re-thinking of the traditional desktop/server/keep-the-network-up IT environment.  In a world where cell phone usage has overtaken land line usage for wireless subscribers, how long before wireless handhelds overtake laptops?   According to Kevin Werbach's blog (a must-read if you're tracking the forces of decentralization), VOIP shipments will exceed PBX shipments for the first time in 2003.  As Kevin notes: "This is a time of reinvention, not senescence, for the tech industry."  Is your IT strategy ready?

If my phone examples don't resonate (and in today's IT, the phone system is not just for the phone guys anymore, but that's a longer discussion), take a look at Wi-Fi.   If you're not already rolling out Wi-Fi in your organization, prepare to be overtaken by the needs of your users.  As I wrote in my column, don't get blindsided again by the same forces that brought you the Internet and the web -- if you take the lead now, you won't be stuck in reactive mode later.  Heed the message of people like John Patrick:

Where is WiFi headed? I don’t claim to have a crystal ball but I believe the evolution looks very much like what we have seen before with the Internet and the World Wide Web. There was a long list of reasons ten years ago for why the Web would never turn into something serious -- certainly not into something that could be used for secure business transactions. The same list of shortcomings is being attributed to WiFi today – security, scalability, reliability, business model, etc. Just like the Web, WiFi is grass roots, standards based, and very decentralized. Just like with the Web, there is no stopping WiFi from becoming mainstream. The benefits are too compelling. [full post]

For any technologies where the benefits are that compelling, not encouraging and enabling your users to take advantage of them seems more like suppression than simple conservatism.  One reader wrote:  Remember, IT still gets to be on the hook for making these things work, whether they want to or not.  Don't confuse resistance with caution.  Point well-taken, but my advice would be don't let caution prevent you from rolling out technologies that are clearly inevitable.

Paper, plastic -- or Linux?

One of the fun things about going to highly-verticalized industry conferences like NACS.tech is browsing through the industry trades and finding magazines with titles like Professional Candy Buyer and Convenience Store News.  This year, my find was Chain Store Age, whose April 3rd issue had an interesting piece about Hannaford Bros., the first U.S. grocery chain to roll out a major Linux implementation.   The first-ever grocery store transaction using a Linux-based point-of-sale (POS) system occurred on February 4, 2003 at a Hannaford supermarket in Standish, Maine.  Unfortunately, the piece at Chain Store Age that turned me on to all of this is only available in the for-pay archives, but CIO Bill Homa says in a press release:

"Hannaford's goal with our POS project was to develop a solution that gives us a competitive advantage, and we have accomplished that," said Bill Homa, senior vice president and CIO for Hannaford Bros. Co. "By running Linux on the sealed-chassis BEETLE, Hannaford will have a very low TCO, both in initial capital expenses and over the life of the system, and we have already seen a dramatic increase in performance that will help move customers through the checkout lanes faster." 

The vendor for the BEETLE systems is Windor Nixdorf, a company with over 4,000 employees and the #3 provider of ATMs in the world, the company who continues to work with Burlington Coat Factory, a pioneer in the use of Linux POS systems.  Linux seems to be quietly catching fire in this environment, and is featured on the cover of April's issue of Retail Info Systems News.   For anyone interested in Linux in non-traditional environments, be sure to check out Joe Skorupa's cover story and interview with Bill Homa, Hannaford's CIO, in RIS News -- it's a highly-informative view of how the retail industry works, what led Homa to Linux, and how the project unfolded.

Linux helping me get through the check-out lane faster?  Now that's progress.