How to prepare before you leap to Linux

Enterprise adopters who have blazed the Linux trail have practical advice for those contemplating a change. First, ignore the hype and make decisions based on your own needs. “Linux is like the new restaurant that opened in town — everyone wants to go,” says DuWayne Mutchler, director of enterprise hosting at EDS. But before you go, here’s how to prepare, according to technologists who have already been there:

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Examine the whole cost picture. “Box A vs. Box B is only a fraction of what you need to look at,” says Anthony Hill, CTO of Golden Gate University. “You have to look at the total architecture, and all the supporting apps and your staffing model. Then add in your [migration] costs — if you’re switching — and that’s the cost equation you’re looking at.”

Get a business driver. “If cost is the only driver, that can easily get eaten up over the long run with migration cost and administrative overhead. At best, it’s a one-time gain,” says Chad Robinson, senior analyst at Robert Frances Group. What you want, Robinson explains, “is for Linux to provide additional business capability and a repeated gain.”

Try before you buy. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and other major Linux vendors have Linux development labs where you can take your application and see how it would run in a Linux environment (from desktops to mainframes) without having to deploy Linux yourself. Use them.

Go for the low-lying fruit and test like crazy. Don’t start by migrating mission-critical, vertically scaled applications, says Burlington Coat Factory CIO Mike Prince, because Linux’s ability to handle complex application environments is still evolving. “The [Linux] OS is a work in progress, I’ve seen enormous improvement in the last two years,” he says. Also, “be darned sure that [your application] works” before you deploy it.

Don’t ignore support. “Do not automatically assume you will receive the same high level of support you get today when replacing failed hardware, restoring and rebuilding large databases, and recovering from … catastrophic failure,” says Terry Milholland CIO and CTO of EDS. Have an adequate support plan.

Pump up the team. Don’t ignore training for systems administrators, even if they already know Unix or Linux, Robinson says. “In many cases an admin who knows Linux can get a few points of productivity boost even with some modest training.” Cars.com’s Vice President of Technology Laef Olson says: “Build a small, competent, and dedicated developer and system administrator team, get them excited about the challenge, make the conversion process fun, and maintain very detailed documentation and change control.”

Don’t stop at Linux. There are many open source applications worth considering that will work well as part of a Linux stack, Robinson says, such as Apache, JBoss/Tomcat, and Open LDAP. “Its just nuts to stop with Linux. Why stop with one level of cost savings? Why not go for 10?”