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0 pointslloeki12y ago0 comments

> You'd probably be paid more money if the costs for IT weren't so high. Note I don't actually believe any of those things...

I do, from first hand experience: we're developing insurance pro software, and also have an all in one hosted solution, where we handle everything for the customer (from storage to configuration to backup), we set up an IPsec link and they just connect via TS. The product, which has a codebase that organically evolved during 10 years (resulting in DWTF worthy stuff), solves a number of real problems for our customers and in spite of the warts and bugs, they do like the product. It's hosted on Windows machines, including Office and whatnot. The growing MS license costs are currently driving the hosting solution out of business. We know first hand that alternative solutions (like a hypothetic port to Linux) would have cleared enough money to hire two developers, and get rid of a dedicated MS sysadmin (so that makes three full-time engineer jobs). And we're not even talking about moving to a web-based solution, which would cost a fraction of that again (and we know that because we're developing and hosting web stuff too).

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tracker112y ago

I think if it were a web based solution your argument wouldn't be as sound.. MS server licensing isn't really so bad if you aren't also doing larger deployments of SQL and/or Exchange.

As it is, have you checked into porting your software to Mono (assuming it's .Net based), which may or may not work for what you have... if it's COM or ATL based, you're really SOL. That said, if you're mostly winforms, and don't have too many dependencies on third party gui controls, you have a shot there.

That would really lower your costs... and as you mention, a web based solution could make a lot more sense, if you can support that model, depending on your software.

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