enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

[Bolesław Tokarski <boleslaw.tokarski@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, Paweł,

I am having some difficulties with recognising what you define as the
5-7 year old engine.

I do not think that chasing new technology is the way to go, nor a goal
of this group.

> From my experience I can say that for desktop environment and Windows
> legacy application the only way is to move them to virtual
> environment. I would advise to re-use cloud services (what we are
> currently evaluating within Capgemini), like Desktop-on-Demand,
> Application-on-Demand.
>
> For those, who need to host everything locally, there are technologies
> like Citrix, VMWare and many others. But expensive. Both with money
> and effort.
There are two approaches to using remote apps - either you have that for
the apps that do not work in your (Linux) environment or you use the
paradigm of using only remote apps.

From your presentation at the UES I believe you took the latter, all
applications running remotely. This is consistent, allows you to switch
backend applications quite easily, dismissing the problem of the OS
required for the particular app.

However, the former approach of "just" providing legacy apps remotely
gives you a false sense of comfort - you no longer have the urge to
migrate to standard-based protocols or apps that will run natively under
Ubuntu.

I believe my company would be happy to provide regular Outlook as a
Citrix XenApp to Ubuntu users. However, that would mean that the
Exchange guys can freely break IMAP, firewall some ports that are "not
required" and tell the users to use the uniform Outlook client from the
Cloud.

> For server side, I would recommend leaving Exchange server behind for
> other technologies (both on-premise and as a service). The choice is
> quite good. And if you look around carefully, you may even find a good
> SaaS solution with on-premise servers. You just need to be open for a
> change.
Well, I am open to change, but I am not the (only) one making decisions
in my company.
> Again: making Ubuntu work with 5-7 years old technology (just because
> it is already there) is not innovative. I would even call it a step
> back. It's like buying Ferrari, then changing the engine to old and
> rusty one, because you are not allowed to drive more than 35 MPH
> anyways... If you buy Ferrari, you change the roads you are driving
> on, not the engine, you go to a race track, to be able to use full
> power of the car.
I am running my Ferrari on my race track at home. I do not mind driving
the same Ferrari at work even on 35mph roads. It's much more comfortable
than those GM cars (see: http://www.performantsystems.com/GM.html)
> Yes, some of current issues can be solved during this discussion, but
> the question is "is this the goal of this forum"?
Well, I guess then we need to define some goals. That is a good idea.
Let's work on them. How would you define our goals?

Cheers,
Ballock