Open Source on the Desktop Faces Hurdles

By Maria Trombly | Securities Industry News | June 28, 2004

June 28, 2004 - Although open source, in the form of Linux, Apache, MySQL and other applications, has become increasingly popular on Wall Street servers, open-source applications still face almost insurmountable hurdles when it comes to the desktops.

Some firms are trying to make a go of it, however. For example, Automated Trading Desk, a financial services and stock trading company based in Mount Pleasant, S.C., recently told SearchEnterpriseLinux.com that about 70 percent of its end users have Linux desktops, including all of the company's traders and programmers. According to Eric Hunter, the firm's system administrator, they use the OpenOffice productivity application, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office.

Joe Dennick, IS director at Omaha-based Securities America Financial Corp., uses Linux on the desktop together with open-source productivity applications, including OpenOffice. "I use them personally and there are other people that use them personally and I think they work well," he said.

However, there aren't enough applications available yet for the Linux desktop environment to make it feasible for the enterprise.

"Quicken is a good example," he said. "It would be a real hassle to use Linux for almost everything and then switch to Windows to run Quicken applications."

However, Dennick has been getting requests for Linux from an unexpected direction: end users. Usually, Linux is a favorite of programmers and other hard-core computer buffs, and IT managers who want to reduce their software licensing costs--not actual business users who would have to learn a new, relatively unfriendly operating system.

But many of Dennick's users are business owners themselves--he serves a network of more than 1,500 independent brokers.

"Many of our customers have asked us to head in that direction so that they can get out from under Windows," he said. "They have to buy their own licenses from Microsoft, and they'd rather run Linux so they don't have to pay for it. That's definitely an example where cost is an issue."

Unfortunately, Securities America's primary Web sites have been developed using the .Net infrastructure from Microsoft, which is incompatible with the open-source Mozilla browser. Dennick's not about to have his programmers rewrite all the Web sites so that they'll run under Linux. And progress is happening on the Mozilla front, he said, but it's slow.

Making Progress
According to Burton Group analyst Gary Hein, the combination of OpenOffice and the Mozilla browser has, in fact, brought the Linux desktop closer to reality, and, for some business applications, they may be good enough.

However, Hein said, most desktops run more than just one or two applications. Back-office servers, by comparison, are often task-specific: a server may host a database or an e-mail system or a Web site. A desktop, however, must be able to house all the software that users need. A single enterprise may run more than 1,000 different applications, he said--most of which are probably only available on Windows.

Another way in which desktops are different from servers is the need for reliability, said Larry Tabb, founder and CEO of The Tabb Group.

"If an individual's PowerPoint slide crashes, it's bad for him, but not bad for the whole organization," Tabb said. "But if you're talking about a mission-critical [back-office] application, you don't want it crashing at all."

According to Tabb, firms have a lot more control when it comes to an open-source environment. Linux can be easily modified by companies that use it and its source code--as the phrase "open source" implies.

"You can try to understand why the application is crashing and fix it," he said. "In a Microsoft environment, you have to talk to Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft has traditionally not been the most stable environment, even though the last couple of releases have been much better."

All in all, Hein said, desktop Linux is probably best when users only need one or two applications, which are available on Linux or can be ported to Linux, or who use Web-based systems accessible through a browser. Help desks, for example, may fall into this category, he said.

'A Lot of Waste'
In addition, companies may be moving away from the smorgasbord of desktop software that's currently in place, said Damon Kovelsky, an analyst at Financial Insights.
"More and more companies are thinking about the number of applications they allow on the desktop," he said. "There's a lot of waste. Think of how many applications you have that you never use."

With Linux, companies are able to decide which applications their users will get--and only pay for those applications. With Windows, there's less flexibility. Kovelsky, for example, has Microsoft Access on his machine, which he's never used--but that, in one way or another, his company has paid for.

"As more companies are taking a limiting approach, Linux is a much more viable alternative," he said.

However, for most Wall Street firms, Linux on the desktop is still not ready for prime time. For example, Investors Capital has 70 employees serving 1,000 financial professionals through Investors Capital Corp. Bruce Howard, the firm's IT administrator, considered switching everyone over to Linux and OpenOffice about six months ago.
"I was pretty impressed with OpenOffice," he said. "And if we could move towards using that instead of Microsoft Office on the front end, it would be a substantial savings in software costs."

However, after taking a closer look, he decided against making the switch. The first reason was compatibility, he said. "Almost right away, I had a document created in Excel and it would not print in OpenOffice without being readjusted."

In fact, Excel compatibility is a major problem for Street firms, which often use complex Excel spreadsheets combined with macros or proprietary add-ons for analytics. The macros and add-on software don't translate to OpenOffice.

Howard said compatibility wouldn't be that much of a problem if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft Office is so ubiquitous.

"Microsoft Office is the standard both within our organization and in the business world," he said. "We need to be able to share documents and resources, and third-party plug-ins are made for Office because it's the standard."

For example, Investors Capital uses a contact management program called Goldmine, which can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Word to create mail-merged documents. It also works in conjunction with Outlook to send e-mails to Goldmine contacts. Neither of these functions will work with OpenOffice.

"Not everyone in the organization uses those," Howard admitted.

But users who don't need mail merge and switch to OpenOffice, may find out that they do, in fact, need mail merge two months later. "Then I have to reconfigure the system in order to make mail merge work," Howard said. "That's a tax on our staff."

And, in general, he said, he prefers all users to have the same base system, instead of having some users on Linux and OpenOffice and others on Windows and Microsoft Office.

In addition, the same level for support isn't available for OpenOffice as there is for Microsoft Office. When it comes to the latter, users can choose from textbooks, online learning tools, built-in interactive help, classes at local community colleges and elsewhere, and Microsoft's own lines of support.

"With OpenOffice and other open-source platforms, I have to do extensive research to try to find answers to questions," said Howard.

The lack of support is especially problematic, he said, because users are unfamiliar with OpenOffice, while they've been using Microsoft Office for years.

"That turns into more training, more support that our IT staff has to provide," he said. "The upfront cost savings of not having to pay a license fee for software gets lost down the road because of the support that we have to provide."

Howard is willing to reconsider his decision not to go with OpenOffice, but only if it looked as though it was going to become the standard. "If a large number of other organizations are using it, we would certainly revisit whether we should use it or not," he said.

New Territory
There is some hope on this front. Several cities--and even entire countries around the world--have made Linux on the desktop a priority.

Developing nations like Brazil, Russia and China are prime areas for Linux growth because they have less of an investment in the Windows standard--and less money to spend on new software purchases. Other governments are opting for Linux because of better security, flexibility, or just animosity towards Microsoft. Among the latest converts are Brandenburg and Munich in Germany, and Bergen, Norway's second-largest city.
As users switch over, OpenOffice will become more robust. In addition, other software will be created to serve these users. Today, most business software is written for the Windows platform--a problem that hurt IBM's attempt to launch a competing desktop operating system, OS2, a few years ago.

It is possible for a standard to change, Howard said.

"We saw a great example of that with the Netscape browser, which set the standard when the Internet first became publicly accessible," he said. "Netscape set that standard, but we saw Microsoft come in and steal that standard. So, at some point in time, OpenOffice may come in, and if it starts taking 50 percent of the users, I would certainly revisit it and recommend it to my organization."