FAA Vista shun indicates Linux and Google rise, Microsoft turbulence

Stan Beer
Thursday, 08 March 2007 09:44

Opinion and Analysis

A report in Information Week that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) may shun the idea of upgrading to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office in favor of Linux and Google Apps must be giving the big software company air sickness.

The problem for Microsoft is that FAA CIO David Bowen has made it clear that the upgrade path from Windows XP is still very much a holding pattern. Bowen's own words indicate that the FAA intends to stick with XP for as long as Microsoft supports it. This is not good news for a company that lives by selling new must have operating systems.

Judging by the fact that there are substantial sites around the world that have only recently upgraded to XP, the FAA could be sticking with XP for some time yet. That is unless, of course, a cheaper and better solution comes along.

Bowen is, like other CIOs, worried about two major things with a Vista upgrade: compatibility with existing applications (in the FAA's case Lotus Notes is an example) and cost. Thus he is looking at a possible Linux and Google Apps combination and holding discussions with the agency's PC supplier Dell about the feasibility of implementing such a solution.

Coincidentally, (or perhaps not?) Dell has been making a song and dance recently on its Dell IdeaStorm website about the possibility of bringing pre-installed Linux desktop and notebook PCs to the market. Dell, which already has a close relationship with Google, has been holding discussions with Novell and other Linux distributors on this, although nothing is definite.

The compatibility with existing applications issue at FAA does not necessarily go away with a Linux and Google Apps solution. However, the cost advantages compared to upgrading to Vista could be considerable, not to mention the security advantages of having diskless workstations that can't be infected with Trojans, worms and other malware.

That said, there's a lot of life left in Windows XP and most organizations will not be making radical moves to new computing architectures for quite a while. However, as both Linux and SaaS applications, such as Google Apps, gain maturity and usability with passing years, they continue to inflict tiny but increasingly annoying chips in Microsoft's dominant position on the desktop.