[luau] Linux in Hawaiian Industry

[Dwight Victor]

Hi Keith,

I'm not sure what the status of Linux is in the business community, but I
can give you some information that I've picked up during my stint at one of
Hawaii's premiere startups on Oahu (ymmv on Maui).

I worked at Pihana Pacific, Inc. (now known as Equinix) for three years.  We
built a network of neutral data centers throughout Asia and provided a
variety of value-added services (i.e., bandwidth, data storage,
backup/restore, peering, colocation services, etc.).  At our peak, we were
able to secure $290 Million in VC funding.

During my three years, I held various positions in our Network Operations as
well as Product Development groups.  In my experience, the PHBs preferred to
go with more "well known" unices, such as Solaris and HP-UX (basically
becuase of all the wheeling & dealing going on with the vendors) and
Microsoft products.  All desktops, file servers, application servers, mail
servers, VPN servers, etc. were Microsoft based systems.  Our billing
systems and CRM ran on Oracle and HP-UX.  Solaris powered the
customer-facing website.  Cisco was our routing/switching brand of choice.

We did have a few Linux boxes (Redhat & SuSE, as well as Trustix), primarily
run by Linux enthusiats as internal development support systems and other
non mission critical systems (i.e., group file server/website, some web
development, etc.).  In fact, I ran a Quake II server which we used to "test
the network" occasionally.

I believe Pihana was on par with most, if not all, of the high-tech,
dot.com, startups, etc. in Honolulu.  The more established companies and
businesses are, I believe (and this includes government - city, state, and
federal - with the exception of the schools), are firm believers in what I
call the "status quo" OSes: Solaris, AIX, Microsoft.  Although towards the
end (before our meger with Equinix), we were beginning to look at Linux as
the OS of choice for our low end NAS servers (customer facing).

Today, based on what I know, there is no real impetus on the part of
business to want to migrate to Linux anytime soon.  I think many companies
are testing the waters, but prefer to stay status quo.  Now the reason I
think they want to stay this way isn't so much based on fear of the unknown,
or little-known OS, but because of the huge leverage the dominant vendors
can bring to bear in terms of discounts and other perks...and, like they
say, no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft (or Sun, or IBM, etc.).

Anyways, good luck with your search.  Hopefully you'll be able to prove me
wrong and sign on with a company devoted to Linux.  If you're looking for a
sysadmin type job, the federal government (i.e., contractors) are looking
for people who know Solaris and Microsoft.

Hope that helps,

Dwight...

-----Original Message-----
From: luau-admin at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
[mailto:luau-admin at videl.ics.hawaii.edu]On Behalf Of Keith
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 3:31 PM
To: LUAU List
Subject: [luau] Linux in Hawaiian Industry


Greetings fellow penguin lovers.  (Penguins in Hawai'i?  Who'd ever
guess?)

I'm a Mainlander (east coast; NY for 24 years, NJ for 4), heading to
Maui with my immediate family in October of this year.  Coming with me
will be 8 years of solid linux experience (since the slackware 1 days),
4 years of which is in industry (granted, with startup companies that
chose Linux for cost-cutting reasons more than anything else).  I
certainly do not want to leave this experience behind; I'd like it to
continue to grow as it has over the past years.  (My friends here joke
about witnessing a "penguin revolution in the tropics".)

I spoke with "halfline" in #hosef on IRC for a little bit earlier and he
suggested that I present my questions to this list.  So, in a nutshell,
what is the position of Linux in Hawaiian commercial industry?  And
what, if anything, is HOSEF doing to promote commercial Linux usage?  I
understand the cost of doing business (and hiring full-time employees,
for that matter) is very high.  Linux is a logical cost-cutting
solution, at least from a computing perspective, and it would amaze me
if businesses don't at least consider using it.

All of your feedback will be greatly appreciated.  I'm finding it rather
difficult to locate potential employment opportunities in this field
(sys admining/sys programming) over there.

Thanks for your time!

Aloha!
krjw.
--
Keith R. John Warno                  [k r j w  at  optonline dot net]
"I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically."
       -- George "Dubuhyuh" Bush, Washington, DC, March 29, 2001
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