3 ms·

Genuinely curious: what's your long term strategy if Microsoft doesn't address your concerns? Desktop Linux?

Silhouette 7y ago
As much as possible, we avoid fixed long-term strategies, or perhaps it's more accurate to say we avoid commitments far into the future. One of the advantages of running smaller businesses in the tech industry is that everything is customised anyway, at least for each individual, and sometimes for a specific engagement. We can therefore adapt to problems or opportunities more quickly than bigger organisations that need centralised IT, standardised equipment bought in volume from preferred suppliers, standardised preinstalled images, and all that. One very clear strategy we do have is to avoid lock-in in any form at almost any cost. All of our important data is held in standardised formats as much as possible. Whatever we're doing on the desktop or mobile devices, we run very standard Linux servers behind it. We limit our dependencies on any external suppliers and online services, other than a few trusted ones for things like off-site back-ups, and where it's a practical necessity for something like communications and payment processing. So the short answer to your question is that if Microsoft doesn't address our concerns, we're done with Windows, and presumably our future laptops and workstations will be Mac or Linux systems. The slightly longer answer is that in some cases a degree of lock-in has been unavoidable because the only suitable software is Windows-based, and that's why both the possibility we're discussing here and alternatives like virtualisation are interesting. We want to make sure we're in the clear legally and we're not doing anything silly in terms of security, but ultimately we need these systems for at least as long as any related engagements continue, so if we have to run Windows 7 with no updates and take other precautions to secure it as much as possible, we will.

As much as possible, we avoid fixed long-term strategies, or perhaps it's more accurate to say we avoid commitments far into the future. One of the advantages of running smaller businesses in the tech industry is that everything is customised anyway, at least for each individual, and sometimes for a specific engagement. We can therefore adapt to problems or opportunities more quickly than bigger organisations that need centralised IT, standardised equipment bought in volume from preferred suppliers, standardised preinstalled images, and all that. One very clear strategy we do have is to avoid lock-in in any form at almost any cost. All of our important data is held in standardised formats as much as possible. Whatever we're doing on the desktop or mobile devices, we run very standard Linux servers behind it. We limit our dependencies on any external suppliers and online services, other than a few trusted ones for things like off-site back-ups, and where it's a practical necessity for something like communications and payment processing. So the short answer to your question is that if Microsoft doesn't address our concerns, we're done with Windows, and presumably our future laptops and workstations will be Mac or Linux systems. The slightly longer answer is that in some cases a degree of lock-in has been unavoidable because the only suitable software is Windows-based, and that's why both the possibility we're discussing here and alternatives like virtualisation are interesting. We want to make sure we're in the clear legally and we're not doing anything silly in terms of security, but ultimately we need these systems for at least as long as any related engagements continue, so if we have to run Windows 7 with no updates and take other precautions to secure it as much as possible, we will.