No. The problem isn’t expertise — it’s CIOs that started their career in the 1990s and haven’t kept up with the times. I had to explain why we wanted PostgreSQL instead of MS SQL server. I shouldn’t have to have that conversation with an executive that should theoretically be a highly experienced expert. We also have CIOs that have MBAs but not actual background in software. (I happen to have an MBA but I also have 15+ years of development experience.) My point is CIOs generally know “business” and they know how to listen to pitches from “Enterprise” software companies — but they don’t actually have real-world experience using the stuff they’re forcing upon the org.
I recently did a project with a company that wanted to move their app to Azure from AWS — not for any good technical reason but just because “we already use Microsoft everywhere else.”
Completely stupid. S3 and Azure Blob don’t work the same way. MCS and AWS SES also don’t work the same way — but we made the switch not even for reasons of money, but because some Microsoft salesman convinced the CIO that their solution was better. Similar to why many Jira orgs force Bitbucket on developers — they listen to vendors rather than the people that have to use this stuff.
> I had to explain why we wanted PostgreSQL instead of MS SQL server.
Tbf, you are giving up a clustering index in that trade. May or may not matter for your workload, but it’s a remarkably different storage strategy that can result in massive performance differences. But also, you could have the same by shifting to MySQL, sooooo…
That’s so infuriating. But, while the people in your story sound dumb, they still sound way more technically literate than 95% of society. Azure is blue, AWS is followed by OME.
Teach a 60 year old industrial powertrain salesman to use Linux and to redevelop their 20 year old business software for a different platform.
Also explain why it’s worth spending food, house, and truck money on it.
Finally, local IT companies are often incompetent. You get entire towns worth of government and business managed by a handful of complacent, incompetent local IT companies. This is a ridiculously common scenario. It totally sucks, and it’s just how it is.
Windows servers are “niche” compared to Linux servers. Command line knowledge is not “uncommon expertise,” it’s imo the bare minimum for working in tech.
I’m not wildly opinionated here, I should clarify. I’d love a more Linux-y world. I’m just saying that a lot of small-medium towns, and small-medium businesses are really just getting by with what they know. And really, Windows can be fine. Usually, however, you get people who don’t understand tech, who can barely use a Windows PC, nevermind Linux, and don’t really have the budget to rebuild their entire tech ecosystem or the knowledge to inform that decision. It sucks, but it’s how it is.
Also, Open Office blows chunks. Business users use Windows. M365 is easy to get going, email is relatively hands-off, deliverability is abstracted. Also, a LOT of business software is Windows exclusive. And that also blows chunks.
I would LOVE a more open source, security minded, bespoke world! It’s just not the way it is right now.
Goodluck teaching administrators an entirely new ecosystem, goodluck finding software off the shelf for Linux.
Bespoke is expensive, expertise is rare, Linux is sadly niche.