[Cialug] Resources for convincing enterprises to go with open source

[Josh More]

Check out the "Why Linux" links at  http://www.novell.com/linux/

The biggest trick is to not sell it with a monetary cost of Zero.  Sell
them SLES and have them get the maintenance contract from Novell.  Then
they're paying money and getting a value from it.

It also sometimes helps to bring an outsider in to talk to them. 
That's where sales guys come in.  If you need a Novell/SLES sales guy, I
could lend you mine.  ;)  If you want to go the RHEL route, call their
sales department and see if they have someone local.  If you want to go
Ubuntu, talk to Matthew.  I hear that they have a sales person in the US
now.


 

-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701



>>> "Aaron Korver" <aaron.korver at gmail.com> 11/14/07 10:39 AM >>> 
Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone had any resources for PHBs regarding open
source
software?

Mainly I'm being asked about trends with open source and ROI; case
studies
would also be great.  Really any official looking documents with graphs
and
stats would suffice.  :-)

My audience for these papers are very skeptical about the value of
open
source.  They are used to buying large software contract with the big
name
companies and using anything with a monetary cost of Zero scares them. 
Thus
it is my task to educate them on the benefits of using open source in
the
enterprise.

Thanks,
Aaron Korver