On Jan 20, 2004, at 3:40 PM, Joe Toon wrote:

> People could case less about operating systems. the fact that not a 
> lot of "suits" showed up is not terribly surprising. For many people, 
> that probably sounds about as fascinating as having a tooth extracted 
> or attending a meeting on new GAAP accounting regulations or similar.
>
> What business people respond to is costs. Plain and simple. If they 
> can do something to increase profits, then they are all for it. If you 
> truly want to get business people excited about deploying Linux, then 
> you have to show them that others have done it and have been very 
> successful at increasing the bottom line.

Here's what worked for me with some small businesses and non-profit 
orgs.

1) Find a business with 3-5 users and an aging box running Win 2000 
server
2) Let MS pre-sell them on the need to upgrade to Win 2003 server
3) Show them the savings they can achieve by moving to Linux/Samba on 
their existing hardware

Note: I think of this as client service. It's incidental that it 
introduces them to Linux.