use Perl

• He had to say something (Score:3, Interesting)

  by jordan (120)

  Don't take the CIO at his word here. Note that Southwest Airlines, which has a similar business model to Jet Blue, and has been doing it a hell of a lot longer, has always turned a profit also. I have no idea what Southwest uses in their IT department.

  The CIO has to say something good about his decision to standardize on MS, right? It was his decision, after all.

  The fact that so much of the Web is run by Unix/Apache, so many palmtops are Palm OS, so many corporate databases are Oracle says something ab
  • Re:He had to say something (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ziggy (25)

    The CIO has to say something good about his decision to standardize on MS, right? It was his decision, after all.

    Yes, and it appears that he made a sound business decision, based on a handful of objective metrics that impact the bottom line. He's bucking the common wisdom that (1) you need multiple platforms to run an enterprise and (2) an all Microsoft shop is a solution for managers who don't know any better. These were conscious decisions he took for JetBlue, and interestingly enough, it seems to
    • Re:He had to say something (Score:1)

      by jordan (120)

      • Yes, and it appears that he made a sound business decision, based on a handful of objective metrics that impact the bottom line.

      Appearances can be deceptive. This article is not exactly bristling with objective metrics.

      This CIO chose Office 2003 over XP for its XML support. XML support that is mostly a marketing checkoff as, by all accounts, it lacks interoperability and formatting information. Sounds like he's got a One Microsoft Way story to tell and he's pushing it for all it's worth.

      • He's bucking
      • Re:He had to say something (Score:2)

        by ziggy (25) on 2003.04.23 22:12 (#19396) Journal

        Appearances can be deceptive. This article is not exactly bristling with objective metrics.

        I'll grant that this article is hardly brimming with real information. Yet I still find myself intrigued with the idea that eliminating non-MS platforms from an enterprise could possibly reduce overall IT costs. Specifically, that the same economic factors that aid jetBlue and Southwest to save money by standardizing on a single model of aircraft may also be a factor in IT.

        If Linux/Apache delivers better price/performance for Web-based apps, as even a Microsoft funded study shows, other non-Microsoft funded research shows a tremendous savings. I just don't see where the big synergies are by having ALL MS in your shop. Seems like you could partition off a place in your IT infrastructure for Web servers running Linux or BSD.

        Looking at costs at the micro level, you can certainly save money on a per-function basis. What this CIO is saying is that there are greater costs to be saved at the macro level by standardizing on an all-Microsoft platform from stem to stern. And that's something I've not heard anyone assert before. Usually, the justification for an all-Microsoft enterprise is much weaker, focusing on inconsequential issues like size of the developer pool, cost of the hardware, or "betting on a market leader".

        I've worked in predominantly MS shops and in mixed shops. In the mostly MS shops, it is expensive to introduce the auxiliary platforms, whether it is Netware, Linux/BSD or commercial Unix. In the mixed shops, I've also seen that the number of admins and related costs do increase compared to a homogeneous environment. So, in my experience, the cost drivers this article cites are real, and I'm inclined to believe that these cost savings are possible.

        Of course, the devil is in the details. :-)

        It's pretty telling that Yahoo and Google run almost no Windows, I think. Clearly, when you really need performance, which at some level translates to money, you don't go with Windows.

        Yes, and neither Yahoo nor Google are remotely similar to jetBlue. Both of those companies view technology as a core competency, not a support function. jetBlue's experiences, if repeatable, are not a blueprint for a new IT management plan for every company on the planet.

        Merrill Lynch has come to similar conclusions. However, they have years of legacy systems to manage and maintain. Their current view is that a monoculture is bad for a variety of reasons, but a large number of supported platforms is tantamount to anarchy. They aim to standardize on 4-6 platforms to (1) reduce management costs, (2) provide a healthy mix of environements for a variety of uses and (3) arbitrage vendors against each other. But ML is in a different space that either Google, Yahoo! and jetBlue. You should expect that they have different needs and come to different conclusions.

        Reply to This

        Parent