The Static Page

Watching a Microsoft Buy-in

Microsoft, the company, its software and its business practices are a hot topic on IWETHEY. This is not surprising, really. Most of the time, intelligent, reasoning people try not to pick Microsoft solutions once they've gained experience in what else there is out there.

Don't confuse "Most of the time" with "All of the time", though. Sometimes, intelligent, reasoning people don't want to know what non-Microsoft solutions there are because they've "bought in" to The Microsoft Way. The Microsoft Way is where servers are rebooted regularly, where the console runs a GUI and much of the server and its software must be configured from it. This is the computing way where not just the vendor's products, but third-party products come as monolithic software where it is easy to hit the boundaries of configuration and flexibility. It's where all this very Personal Computer-oriented and Microsoft-influenced behaviour is considered normal.

It is also what my boss is running his business on.

My boss is the CTO and (IIRC) part owner of a web-hosting company. Pretty much all of our hardware runs Windows, we serve HTTP via IIS 5, we use SQL Server for a backend and our developers use Microsoft's ASP for creating dynamic web pages. We also have two extra applications not from Microsoft to provide FTP and email (including webmail). Before I joined, he tried to run the email application with a Linux-based product that was very expensive and had terrible vendor support. Not expectedly, he's not interested in trying out a Linux-based solution again, even though it would be a lot easier to configure and probably easier to customise, too. But the most compelling reason not to pursue a Linux alternative is all the investment in time in the existing webmail software running on Windows. So I can't really blame him. On the other hand, since we run the all important firewall and DNS services on Linux, which have to be automated when add a customer's domain name, there's a collision of expectations. Modifying the firewall rules, adding or removing IP addresses, patching the machine - none of these things require a reboot or anything remotely approaching a major distruption to a running server. And most of them are a damn sight quicker to do in Linux than on Windows and can be done just as easily remotely as at the console. Not to put a cynical face on it, but I think my CTO appears to be unconsciously resisting the lure of these advantages. In other words, he's "bought in" to the Microsoft Way and it will take something pretty substantial to shake that.

It is interesting to watch this in action. Usually this type of "buy-in" is seen in non-technical managers who believe Microsoft's propaganda because they don't understand or don't want to understand the technical aspects. That type is usually accompanied by unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved. In this case, it's a bit different. My CTO knows the limitations of this type of software and has made a conscious decision to live with them. So in a way, he's the most dangerous type of Microsoft advocate. And that's ironic because OS advocacy is just not his style.

So perhaps it's just a case of better the devil you know...

Wade Bowmer, aka Static

Comments? Email me at static dash page at yceran dot org.