Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 17, 2004 01:39 AM
If you're trying to shift reality, ok. If not, and you really believe this, you don't have a clue.
Where's Appgen/MyBooks?
Quickbooks simply has not the lion's share of small business accounting, but a monopoly. If Microsoft is a monopoly with 90+% of the market, then so is Quickbooks. Call 10 accountants and find out which ones will take accouting data from MyBooks or GnuCash. Or anything else. Their only answer will by Quickbooks. Or a larger accounting system they are standardized on, for businesses considered larger than small businesses.
You are dead wrong on calling it a training issue, but I understand what you are trying to do. It's not a training issue. It is a market monopoly issue, small businesses, and those accountants that deal with small businesses, only using the one (Q/QP) product.
Quickbooks may have dream market share now, but Intuit, Adobe, Macromedia and others are going to be crushed in the next few years if they don't already have a Linux strategy and aren't actively porting to Linux or at a bare minimum attempting to cut corners by running on Java or some other emulation garbage.
Anyone starting a small business today would be crazy, absolutely crazy, to throw money out the window on licensing fees for desktops, file servers, or other small business servers, unless specific business servers ran specialized applications that were impossible to port to Linux. Larger businesses are a different story. But for small businesses, yesterday it was purchasing one copy of Office and copying it to every desktop in the business. And either not worrying about an audit, or hoping it wouldn't happen. Today it is OpenOffice on windows 98/NT, 2000, and even XP that comes with the box. But no one who plans to stay in business, who plans on being competitive, is going to throw thousands and tens of thousands of dollars away on 10, 20, 30 seat organizations. Unless they are really stupid.
Non-startups? They are even more frugal than start-ups. Because they've made their mistakes already and survived. They run their systems into the ground, and then they find someone to dig out the systems so they can run them into the ground again without wasting money on new hardware or software. I know businesses still using IBM PC/Intel 8086/8088s, 286s, 386s, 486s. They are still using Wordperfect on DOS. Still using the 8088s to run custom written dos programs. Secretaries still using 486s with windows 3.1/3.11.
These business owners, running successful businesses for over 10, 15, 20 years, when faced with hardware that finally dies, aren't going to throw money out the window on MS Office, MS file servers, MS databases. They are going to buy hardware that comes with a MS oem desktop install, then when faced with licensing costs for MS file servers, are either going to run a Linux server with Samba and attempt to get their old desktop software to work, or are going to make the decision to run Linux on the desktop. Most will attempt to go with oem Windows desktop with Samba, but when push comes to shove, they will go with Linux even on the desktop. Let's not forget that the open source databases are porting to windows so more and more windows users are going to be exposed to open source databases, OpenOffice runs on both platforms, Mozilla runs on both platforms, Gimp runs on both platforms, did I read about Scribus going to windows as well recently?
If Intuit doesn't already have a migration strategy in place and underway, they are in serious trouble. Doing something at the last minute won't cut it. Because they are going to find themselves in the same position as Microsoft. They may own the small business segment now, but going forward they will be faced with the prospect of lower market share, revenue shrinkage instead of growth and very angry shareholders, the same position that Microsoft is entering into going forward.
Whatever market share on the desktop IDC or Gartner are reporting, they don't have an actual clue on what the real market share is, or they are afraid to report it accurately. IDC is taking a first step by starting to admit more market share through conversions of existing hardware. What they are really doing is deciding to cover their asses before Gartner because the growth of Linux is simply too massive to cover up any more. In the last 12 months, IDC has done an about face at an accelerating rate when it comes to market share of Linux in both servers and desktops. Gartner isn't there yet, but that's to be expected. The one thing they can't erase is the memory of the internet. Their past statements on Linux are going to be real howlers, real wall hangers next year and further into the future (save the DiDiot and Winderle quotes as wall hangers as well). And Intuit, Adobe, Macromedia, and other naysayers are going to be the roadkill that the Linux juggernaut rolled right over. Unless they act now.
Some people actually believe that you can lose money on every sale and make it up in volume. Those are the same people that believe that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership. Just one <A HREF="http://tinyurl.com/5s48h" title="tinyurl.com">response</a tinyurl.com>. Actual user experiences will illuminate the truth.
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In other words, it's a training issue as much as
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 17, 2004 01:39 AMWhere's Appgen/MyBooks?
Quickbooks simply has not the lion's share of small business accounting, but a monopoly. If Microsoft is a monopoly with 90+% of the market, then so is Quickbooks. Call 10 accountants and find out which ones will take accouting data from MyBooks or GnuCash. Or anything else. Their only answer will by Quickbooks. Or a larger accounting system they are standardized on, for businesses considered larger than small businesses.
You are dead wrong on calling it a training issue, but I understand what you are trying to do. It's not a training issue. It is a market monopoly issue, small businesses, and those accountants that deal with small businesses, only using the one (Q/QP) product.
Quickbooks may have dream market share now, but Intuit, Adobe, Macromedia and others are going to be crushed in the next few years if they don't already have a Linux strategy and aren't actively porting to Linux or at a bare minimum attempting to cut corners by running on Java or some other emulation garbage.
Anyone starting a small business today would be crazy, absolutely crazy, to throw money out the window on licensing fees for desktops, file servers, or other small business servers, unless specific business servers ran specialized applications that were impossible to port to Linux. Larger businesses are a different story. But for small businesses, yesterday it was purchasing one copy of Office and copying it to every desktop in the business. And either not worrying about an audit, or hoping it wouldn't happen. Today it is OpenOffice on windows 98/NT, 2000, and even XP that comes with the box. But no one who plans to stay in business, who plans on being competitive, is going to throw thousands and tens of thousands of dollars away on 10, 20, 30 seat organizations. Unless they are really stupid.
Non-startups? They are even more frugal than start-ups. Because they've made their mistakes already and survived. They run their systems into the ground, and then they find someone to dig out the systems so they can run them into the ground again without wasting money on new hardware or software. I know businesses still using IBM PC/Intel 8086/8088s, 286s, 386s, 486s. They are still using Wordperfect on DOS. Still using the 8088s to run custom written dos programs. Secretaries still using 486s with windows 3.1/3.11.
These business owners, running successful businesses for over 10, 15, 20 years, when faced with hardware that finally dies, aren't going to throw money out the window on MS Office, MS file servers, MS databases. They are going to buy hardware that comes with a MS oem desktop install, then when faced with licensing costs for MS file servers, are either going to run a Linux server with Samba and attempt to get their old desktop software to work, or are going to make the decision to run Linux on the desktop. Most will attempt to go with oem Windows desktop with Samba, but when push comes to shove, they will go with Linux even on the desktop. Let's not forget that the open source databases are porting to windows so more and more windows users are going to be exposed to open source databases, OpenOffice runs on both platforms, Mozilla runs on both platforms, Gimp runs on both platforms, did I read about Scribus going to windows as well recently?
If Intuit doesn't already have a migration strategy in place and underway, they are in serious trouble. Doing something at the last minute won't cut it. Because they are going to find themselves in the same position as Microsoft. They may own the small business segment now, but going forward they will be faced with the prospect of lower market share, revenue shrinkage instead of growth and very angry shareholders, the same position that Microsoft is entering into going forward.
Whatever market share on the desktop IDC or Gartner are reporting, they don't have an actual clue on what the real market share is, or they are afraid to report it accurately. IDC is taking a first step by starting to admit more market share through conversions of existing hardware. What they are really doing is deciding to cover their asses before Gartner because the growth of Linux is simply too massive to cover up any more. In the last 12 months, IDC has done an about face at an accelerating rate when it comes to market share of Linux in both servers and desktops. Gartner isn't there yet, but that's to be expected. The one thing they can't erase is the memory of the internet. Their past statements on Linux are going to be real howlers, real wall hangers next year and further into the future (save the DiDiot and Winderle quotes as wall hangers as well). And Intuit, Adobe, Macromedia, and other naysayers are going to be the roadkill that the Linux juggernaut rolled right over. Unless they act now.
Some people actually believe that you can lose money on every sale and make it up in volume. Those are the same people that believe that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership. Just one <A HREF="http://tinyurl.com/5s48h" title="tinyurl.com">response</a tinyurl.com>. Actual user experiences will illuminate the truth.
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