Anyone see a game changer here?

Fri Jan 22 07:19:38 UTC 2010

On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 23:19 -0600, James Hess wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Gadi Evron <ge at linuxbox.org> wrote:
> 
> It is not as if there are a wealth of alternatives.   There are still
> many cases,  where IE  or MSHTML components are a pre-requisite,  to
> access a certain product  that is  important to the user.    A
> canonical example,  would be:
> 
> Intranet apps, web-managed  routers, switches, firewalls, or other
> network infrastructure that can only be administered using MSIE
> version 6 (ActiveX control, or old HTML relying on IE features) --
> probably devices with old software.
> Mail readers such as Outlook with  MSHTML components embedded.
> 

Luckily, in the last 18 months especially, I've seen several different
corporate requirements tender specify __against__ these (huge) problems,
at least in non-US contracts. 

The first-hand argument I've heard for this is that it can actually
reduce the tendered proposal bottom line and TCO, quite the reverse of
what you would assume (probably by more lateral thinking by the Tenders)
Notably, ActiveX was proscribed, followed recently by Silverlight.

Certainly, the first firm to do it about 3 years ago has now written it
in to EVERY request as standard text. Granted these are only around
half-to-1M US$ tenders, but it's a (small) start.

If this actually improves the general market/quality/usability of
devices it's yet to be seen by me and my circle; maybe they are all just
niche companies. They use lots of Sun/EMC/Brocade and similar.

 Yet, I have to say that the kit they end up installing is much easier
to work with for Beasties and Tuxheads; far fewer VMs or Wine just to
use IE or some obscure app (to us, that is) so a much faster/more
familiar job-flow, and less gotchas/misconfigs. Still, no complaints
from MS trained/based engineers that I've heard of that get
contracted-in, this isn't super-uber-BOFH stuff. 

I was truly shocked the first time I read "Standards Compliant" and
"BCPs/RFCs" in a corporate acquisition tender pack, for sure. 

YM<will>V. 

Gord