November 15, 2008 at 3:00 am
All,
I work as a BI Developer based in the UK for one of the top 10 largest blue chip companies in the world. We use the full Microsoft BI stack of products.
However the company has recently annouced that due to the incresasing running costs in the current climate and heightened competition they need to reduce costs. One of the main costs targeted are the Microsoft licencing fees - with the SQL Server ones highlighted as priority number 1.
They are planning to remove this dependency and move to open source platforms i.e. Linux and MySQL.
I have no experience in this software, I like SQL Server as a product and I don't want to waste all the experience I have got in Microsoft technologies.
I have no problems leaving to go contracting elsewhere when the time comes but do you think a lot more of the major companies will turn to open source? I don't want to be left in the cold if everyone dumps SQL Server in favour of open source products.
I would be interested in people's views.
November 15, 2008 at 8:58 am
I can not help but wonder, if the bean counters (Accountants) have taken into consideration the considerable cost associated with such a switch. That is the cost of retraining personnel (Developers, DBAs,Users), the cost of rewriting all the code now utilized, and last but not least the cost of testing all the new software, not even considering the amount of time required to make the switch. Whomever decided this seems to be following the "penny wise pound foolish path".
As far as leaving, stay with the current company during the transition, and learn all you can .... then bring your resume up to date. Doubt if you would ever have trouble finding a new position
November 15, 2008 at 9:37 am
I actually am writing about this next week, or I guess it's already written for release while I'm at PASS.
It doesn't make sense in the short term, for this system or that. However for the long term, you might see some advantages if you are willing to invest in training and potentially turnover of employees. A long term view, say 10 years, could make some sense, at least at the application level.
At the platform level, I'm not sure. If you look out a decade, what is the cost in terms of upgrades? Two SQL versions, 2 Windows versions? What does that add up to? It's a big number, depending on instances, but even at $100,000, how much do you lose in productivity and knowledge if you lose a few employees, have to hire a few more, and train others. The costs would have to be above what you already expect in terms of turnover.
It's a hard decision at a platform level, but at an application level (Sugar CRM v Dynamics) , it does make some sense.
November 15, 2008 at 10:00 am
Thanks guys, some interesting perspectives. I invite more people to raise their points.
Steve where will I be able to read your article?
December 5, 2008 at 12:25 pm
there isn't much difference between MS and Open Source on the backend. The difference is in the finished product.
Take OpenLdap and Active Directory. The former you get a blank LDAP server with a few root classes and you have to do all the work in creating a schema and using other applications to monitor/manage it. With AD you get a finished schema, management tools and you can extend it with other apps without any worries of screwing up your LDAP.
Same thing with SQL/Oracle/DB2 vs MySQL. The former you get a full product. The latter you will need to buy or write other software to get the same functionality. Google is always an example of MySQL scalability, but few mention that their search app they wrote does most of the things that SQL Server does out of the box.
December 10, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Sorry for the delay
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