Putting Together A Linux Office

With increasing chatter about whether 2007 will be the "Year of the Linux Desktop," you hear considerably less about whether it's time for the Linux Office. But business desktops aren't just islands unto themselves. In a networked world, the desktop is just a piece of the office puzzle. There are also servers, printers, faxes and productivity applications.

For this Solutions That Work, the CRN Test Center put together a small-business Linux and open-source office environment and spoke to solution providers who have been examining Linux office solutions on the frontlines. The verdict: Microsoft has a lot to worry about down the road, but in 2007, Linux is still lacking the driver support, ease of use and interoperability with mainstream, legacy software to make office migration pain-free.

In other words, unless you like spending countless hours searching for drivers for office functions like printing and scanning, unless you enjoy teaching customers how to use Linux line commands and unless you can convince customers to simply abandon some Microsoft applications documents because they can't be opened in OpenOffice.org software, don't count on the Windowsless Linux office this year.

"The open-source office would have a foothold, but the lack of a friendly user interface is what deters most folks from going straight for it," said Michael Rodriguez, vice president at Austin Computer Solutions, an Austin, Texas-based solution provider and Red Hat partner in the nascent stages of developing a Linux office practice.

Ease-of-use issues continue to be a deal-breaker in many customer engagements. "We're having drawbacks with questions like, 'We're not sure how it works, how easy it is for folks to be productive on,' " Rodriguez said. "We're installing it in a couple of places where they are able to do their own test beds—places where the decision-maker is also going to be the one who is doing the test."

It's not all bad news for those in the channel building a Linux practice. Investments in developing Linux skills today will likely pay off to some degree over the longer haul as the platform gains acceptance and market share. After all, even Microsoft is investing in a partnership with longtime rival Novell on interoperability between its platform and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.

Next: Selecting The Server