[sf-lug] Request for bid

[jim]

   As you posted your need to the SF-LUG list, I'm replying 
to the list with the hope that members find this a valid 
and interesting aspect of Linux. 

   My company, Systemateka, Inc., does such work and has 
converted Carol Ruth Silver's business systems to a mixed 
environment based on Ubuntu Linux that incorporates her 
legacy, Windows-based financial system. 
   Systemateka is dedicated to open source solutions and 
works in an open style with other techies, including 
experienced system administrators, PHP programmers, Python 
and Django programmers, database administrators, graphic 
designers, documenters, and trainers. 
   As this seems to be for a legal firm, note that I was 
the system administrator at the U. S. Court of Appeals 
for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco and have 
experience with law office needs as well as with training 
and documentation. 
   To make your conversion as quickly as possible 
requires a preliminary assessment of your office workflow 
and software, which entails no downtime, only modest 
intrusion, and a brief written report that maps the steps 
of the transition. 
   Let me know how to pursue this possibility. 

Jim 



On Sun, 2010-08-22 at 12:06 -0700, Christian Einfeldt wrote:
> hi,
> 
> 
> My employer, Al Stoll, is sick and tired of Microsoft Windows
> problems, and he is willing to consider a move to GNU-Linux.  He has
> asked me to find a company that could do the initial move, and could
> provide on-going support.  We would like to speak with companies that
> could bid to do this work.  We do have some mission-critical apps that
> must run on Microsoft Windows, or so we think.  Number one among them
> is Filemaker Pro.  Al is willing to consider OpenOffice.org, but we
> would need to be assured that OOo would be able to be a drop-in
> replacement for Microsoft Office.
> 
> 
> I, of course, am a Linux zealot, but we need to make sure that this
> transition is seamless, or it won't happen at all.  Al Stoll visited
> the Creative Arts Charter School, and was very impressed with seeing
> the kids there doing video editing on Linux.  Al sort of gets the
> importance of Free as in Free Speech, but he and the rest of the staff
> are very much end users, and we would need to make sure that we don't
> put them through a huge learning curve.  They need to be able to leave
> on Friday and come back to work on Monday, and get maybe half a day of
> training and then they need to be able to be off to the races again,
> as our office is a high-pressure office with very serious personal
> injury cases (brain damage cases, etc).  Our opponents usually assign
> twice the number of lawyers that we have to cases on which they oppose
> us, and so downtime kills us.  In fact, one of the reasons that Al is
> considering moving is that he is unhappy with the downtime that we
> have been experiencing due to Microsoft's failware.  If this migration
> is made at all, it will need to be made on the basis of stability,
> reliability, high up-time, and competitive cost.  We would need a firm
> that has experience in working with newbies and assessing their needs
> and making the technology transparent to them.  
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sf-lug mailing list
> sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/sf-lug
> Information about SF-LUG is at http://www.sf-lug.org/