Tag Archives: Cowen Group Inc.

About 2122 days ago Business Software

Ease Your Microsoft Vista Migration Headaches

Small and mid-size businesses are expected to adopt the new Microsoft Vista operating system at a rate that is 50 to 60 percent faster than larger companies in the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008, according to a recent study by Cowen & Co., the investment bank. And Microsoft is counting on small business uptake of its newest version of the Windows operating system software to create a critical mass of buyers and make Vista the new industry standard. But while Vista is here and small and mid-size businesses are getting their first solid look at the operating system, for many the verdict is still out.  On one hand, the new Aero interface is more graphically pleasing and in many ways much easier to use; on the other, the feature-rich user interface hogs a lot more CPU resources, and many small businesses are wrestling with application and driver compatibility challenges. Some end users are questioning the benefits of moving at all — noting that there are limited functional differences compared to the XP operating system that currently permeates the small business computing environment. Still, given the better interface, speedier search capabilities along with the fact that Microsoft has no plans to stop aggressively marketing Vista, there’s little doubt that small and mid-size businesses eventually will make the shift.  When and how to switch The question is how quickly should your business migrate to Vista? Analysts at Gartner think it will happen at a fairly rapid clip, and that small business adoption of Vista will continue to outpace large enterprise penetration for the foreseeable future. The main reason:  small businesses don’t worry as much about managing complex mixes of operating systems within their organization, says Annette Jump, an analyst with Gartner. They generally run several operating systems within their environment. Gartner expects small businesses to adopt Vista more quickly than medium-size businesses because they make individual hardware purchases, including PCs, through consumer channels, such as retail or PC stores, rather than from professional channels, such as value-added resellers. Indeed, Gartner expects that the consumer versions of Vista will remain in use among small businesses and will account for 9 percent of the PC installed base among small businesses in 2007. Mid-size companies will take longer to migrate and will begin doing so in the middle of 2008 after ensuring that all mission-critical business applications are supported by Vista. Until then, they will continue to use PCs running Windows XP; Vista will make up less than 6 percent of the PC installed base in midsize companies this year. By 2009, however, Vista is expected to surpass XP as the primary OS, with 48 percent of installed PCs running Vista. The reasons to suffer through migration In initial reviews of Vista, there have been some notable enhancements, including better user access control (UAC) which provides more granular control of permissions and local security, enhanced group policy control, and an enhanced event viewer. Loren Swanson, technical operations manager for Homegain a 100-employee firm that connects real estate professionals with homeowners and homebuyers online, likes the faster search capabilities on Vista, which are more akin to the consumer search engines that mine the Internet for information. Still, he is just in the initial stages of evaluating Vista in the labs for his company and has not officially rolled out the software to his staff. At this point, he’s in no real hurry. “From a user perspective, it does not offer a tremendous amount of new upgrades,” he says. He adds that there’s not much more that a user can do in Vista that can not be done in XP. Moreover, Swanson says that Vista is not currently compatible with the company’s voice over IP (VoIP) phone system from Shoretel, although the phone maker is expected to release a version that is Vista compatible shortly. So, while every user at Homegain is currently licensed under the enterprise agreement with Microsoft for Vista, there are some compatibility issues that still need to be squared away. It’s not an uncommon situation, says Ian Lao, senior analyst with consulting firm In-Stat, a high-tech market research firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz. These types of compatibility issues will be considerable for small and mid-size businesses. He says it’s important for small businesses to be aware of compatibility issues with legacy systems and application and support for current hardware as they begin their migration planning.

About 2426 days ago Business Software

Is Linux Right for Your Business?

When clients call Secure-24, in Southfield, Mich., seeking advice and technology to meet secure hosting needs, CEO Matthais Horch points out to them three critical factors to consider: functionality, cost and support. More and more, Horch says, an open source solution offers a competitive combination of those elements for small and mid-size businesses compared to the alternatives. Following the rapid growth and enterprise success of Linux and other open source applications, many businesses are considering a switch. A survey last year of 500 North American companies by investment banker SG Cowen & Co. found that Linux use was reported in 53 percent of companies. Small businesses and fast-growing companies are seeing Linux as a chance to deploy advanced technologies that they could only access in the past by buying costly proprietary technologies. But how do you know whether Linux is right for your business? Low cost attracts interest The biggest attraction of Linux remains its low cost. In many cases, a company can acquire and run software without incurring any licensing expenses for software and services. A recent study of 200 Linux enterprises by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) conducted for Levanta, maker of open source management software and appliances, noted, among other findings, “Linux acquisition costs can be almost $60,000 less per server than Windows in software costs alone.” While acquisition and licensing fees for open source tend to be far lower, some studies by Microsoft and analysts in the past pegged open source with a higher total cost of ownership than Windows, mainly due to higher management costs. But the Enterprise Management Associates study found that reliability was higher for Linux than Windows systems, problems tended to be diagnosed and repaired in 30 minutes and management tended to spend less time managing Linux. Stability and security advantages No amount of cost savings can offset troublesome machines prone to breakdown. A Microsoft-sponsored study by Security Innovation, an application security firm that provides risk analysis and mitigation services, a Windows-based solution more reliable than one based on Linux as business needs grew over one year. The study found Linux administrators were about 70 percent slower than Windows counterparts to fulfill business objectives and experienced more system failure and needed more patches than the Windows team. But the EMA study found different results. It noted that respondents that used Linux-based systems reported 99 percent up time with 17 percent saying they had no downtime at all. Scott Crenshaw, senior director of product management and marketing at Red Hat, a leading open source software and service provider, says that Linux provides advantages when it comes to security. “We measured the time it took to fix and deliver critical security bugs in the operating system,” he says. “In Windows, people have gotten used to waiting for three, six, nine, 12 months.” But Red Hat delivered fixes within 24 hours 100 percent of the time, he says. Making the switch Many small and mid-size businesses simply stay with Windows because they rely on Microsoft Office. They reason that mixing up the computing environment on the backend with Linux while the front office needs Word or Excel will just increase support and integration costs. Crenshaw, however, argues that open source’s time has come on the PC desktop as well. Open Office is a multi-platform office productivity suite that has been developed through the OpenOffice.org, an open source project. The software includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Crenshaw says it has “a very rich set of productivity tool that meet the needs of 90 percent of users.” Any change to the IT environment can cause major headaches and generate significant costs. But certain environmental events in the business can make managing the switch to open source a little easier. Those include increasing server or database capacity and adding new business services when buying new hardware. “Any of those events are a good time to trigger a migration decision,” Crenshaw says. Increasing commitments from large hardware companies such as Dell and IBM, the availability of professional open source support and the growing ranks of qualified open source technical support staff make the option to move to open source easier than ever.  “The only caveat, my only warning,” says Horch, of Secure-24, “is have some sort of support.”