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How do I get my IT department to "bless" R?

13 messages · Daniel Viar, Erik Iverson, Jim Porzak +7 more

Original
Daniel Viar
# 
I currently use R at work "under the radar", but there's a chance I
could loose that access.  I'd like to get our company to feel
comfortable with open source and R in particular.  Does anyone have
any experience with their company's IT department and management that
they would be willing to share?  How does one get an all Microsoft
shop on board with allowing users to user R?  I know about the recent
NY Times article and recent news.  I'm afraid I may need some case
studies or examples of what other companies have done.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dan Viar
Chesapeake, VA
Erik Iverson
# 
This is a very broad question, and the answer is going to depend on your 
particular situation, which we are not privy to.

I'll say two things.  First, you should try to figure out why they would not 
want you to run R, so you can address those reasons specifically.  Second, you 
might take a particular problem that you deal with, and specifically write out 
how R can make it easier, cheaper, more efficient to solve than the current 
solution.

Are there really still all-MS shops around?
Daniel Viar wrote:
Jim Porzak
# 
Yes, Erik, there are all MS shops around! Ours happens to be one.

However, I have absolutely no push back from IT on my use of R to do
marketing analytics. The trick, Dan, is to deliver relevant and
actionable results to the business. Your champions will stick up for
you when, and if, you get any push back from IT.

HTH,
Jim Porzak
TGN.com
San Francisco, CA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimporzak
use R! Group SF: http://ia.meetup.com/67/
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Erik Iverson <iverson at biostat.wisc.edu> wrote:
Warren Young
#
Daniel Viar wrote:
Anyone still denying, here in 2009, that open source offers serious 
business value is a dinosaur, doomed to extinction.  Their cerebella 
have calcified.  The balance tipped a decade ago.

Just like the real dinosaurs, extinction will only be fast on a 
geological time scale.  Don't expect your job to evaporate next year 
because they won't use open source.  Just expect that over the coming 
decades to be routinely outcompeted by the mammals.

Chances are, your company actually has embraced open source in some way. 
  One facile argument is to ask if they use Google.  Yes?  Google uses 
Linux, MySQL, and yes, even R, so your company does too, if indirectly. 
  Likely, some bit of open source has crept into your actual operation 
elsewhere besides your little R enclave.
Proceed the same way you already are.

It is as Gandhi said: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, 
then they fight you, then you win."

Every revolution in corporate IT happened this way, including 
Microsoft's own rise to dominance.  (Remember Big Blue?)
David Smith
#
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Daniel Viar <dan.viar at gmail.com> wrote:
In many cases your IT department will feel secure with R if there's a
company behind it to offer technical support and offer a "throat to
choke" if problems arise.  (Whether it's the former or the latter that
is more significant depends on the company.)  There are some companies
out there that offer support subscriptions to R, including the one I
work for.

If you work in a regulated environment (such as clinical pharma with
21CFR11, or finance with Sarbanes-Oxley), there may also be some
nervousness about whether R can be compliant.  It almost certainly is,
but it often needs to be validated in your own environment. I wrote
about this recently (from the perspective of FDA validation) at
http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/01/analyzing-clinical-trial-data-with-r.html
.

In many companies IT departments are getting comfortable with relying
on FOSS applications, but the real successes (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
...) have come when there's a commercial company to back up the open
source community.

# David Smith

--
David M Smith <david at revolution-computing.com>
Director of Community, REvolution Computing www.revolution-computing.com
Tel: +1 (206) 577-4778 x3203 (Seattle, USA)
Michael Bibo
# 
Daniel Viar <dan.viar <at> gmail.com> writes:
Just my opinions from my own experience...

Don't talk to just anyone in your IT department, but try to identify someone 
who a) has some authority/decision-making power; and b) is likely to be 
somewhat OSS knowledgable/tolerant/keen.

Go through proper procedures.  In my organisation, there is a specific process 
for approval of software.  I filled in appropriate forms and provided 
supporting documentation such as:

http://www.r-project.org/doc/R-FDA.pdf
copy of the GPL and references such as http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?
story=2008081313212422
R installation and administration manual
NY Times article

I also made futher points about the extensive use of R in peer-reviewed 
journals such as JSS, and the superiority of the email help list and archives 
over the support offered for most proprietary products (with specific 
examples).

Most of this is to make it abundantly clear that you are talking about a 
quality, open-source product, not some small piece of freeware developed by an 
individual.

I have found two main types of IT concerns.  Firstly, they are appropriately 
concerned about licensing issues.  You need to reinforce that, though free, it 
is licensed - under the GPL.  Secondly, they may have concerns simply because 
it is not the existing/approved/supported norm in your organisation.  I have 
found that it is important here to make it clear that you will not be 
expecting them to 'support' the software in the sense of helping you learn to 
use it (which is often the case for office-type software and its users in 
organisations).

And if all else fails, and your organisation's policies refer to 'installing' 
software, you can always run it portably, even from an external drive (at 
least in a Windows environment).

Ultimately, though, I think the thing that helped most to convince our IT 
department to let me try R was when they themselves had the nightmare of 
dealing with the licensing and accounts division of a certain well-known 
statistical package proprietor.

Michael Bibo
Queensland Health
Warren Young
#
Erik Iverson wrote:
Reasons imply reasoning.  It's usually the case that decisions like this 
are made on an emotional basis, not a rational one.

	"All of my business associates use Microsoft."
	"All of my friends use Microsoft."
	"Microsoft is dominant."
	"I like Microsoft."

These are not reasons.  They are expressions of emotional state. 
Envision a person saying such things wrapped in a security blanket 
printed with the colorful Windows flag logo, sucking their thumb. 
Works, doesn't it?  They are telling you that Microsoft makes them feel 
comfortable.

I don't call this vision into your mind to belittle the people saying 
these things.  We all have these emotional responses; everyone can be 
tarred by this brush.  The point is, if you want to fight such a thing, 
you can be as rational as you like, but never forget that your opponent 
is not being rational.  Tell them this other blanket is better, and 
they'll deny it.  Give them the other blanket, and they'll either drop 
it or attack you for offering it.  Rip away their blanket and you will 
face a tantrum.

A true revolution is unstoppable; open source is such a thing. 
Eventually your opponent will pick up the other blanket all on their own.

You can push things along faster with the tools of statecraft.  This 
field has two main branches.

One branch is war.  This is the practice of applying a combination of 
superior will, strategy, and force to defeat an opponent.  This is the 
"rational argument" option.  Yes, I call that war.  Why?  It's the 
emotion vs. rationality thing again.  You're using the wrong tool for 
the job, so your only hope of success is to make the opponent capitulate 
through that combination of superior will, strategy and force.  Since 
the OP isn't in a position to mount a frontal assault, this leaves only 
the uglier option, guerrilla war.  This has a good outcome even less 
often than traditional war.

The other branch is diplomacy.  This takes longer, is not as direct, and 
requires a deft touch, but usually works better in the long term.  It 
also requires a certain amount of backing strength.  You can't hope to 
succeed at diplomacy when there is no possibility of war.  If war is 
out, diplomacy is out, too.  If I read the OP's post correctly, he isn't 
in a position to directly wield strength, so he'll need to work through 
channels that give him access to that strength.  He needs to find strong 
allies, and support them.

If there are no such allies, he has no way to prosecute war, and thus no 
way to back diplomacy.  That forces him down a minor branch of 
statecraft, which I call the Switzerland model: keep your head down, and 
continue to be useful to those around you who practice the other forms 
of statecraft.

There are other ways to run a state, but they don't work.

Reading suggestions for anyone who thinks I'm full of it:

	http://www.gutenberg.org/files/132/132.txt
	http://www.miyamotomusashi.com/gorin.htm
	http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15772/15772-h/15772-h.htm
	http://catb.org/esr/writings/
Barry Rowlingson
# 
2009/1/29 Daniel Viar <dan.viar at gmail.com>:
An 'all Microsoft shop' is what exactly? There is nothing on your PC
that isn't from Microsoft?

 That makes me think that you're either going to be forced to do your
statistics in Excel or you're going to have to write everything from
scratch in MS Visual Basic/C#/ASP/Bandwagon-of-the-month Language.
$Deity have mercy upon your soul.

 MS don't make anything even *remotely* like R, and if your IT dept
don't see that then get them fixed or fired.

 Now the argument between R and other proprietary stats packages
(SPSS, SAS, Stata) is something completely different. But if the
powers that be won't allow non-MS software, then those options are as
closed off as R is to you.

Barry
Neil Shephard
#
Daniel Viar wrote:
What alternative do they expect you to use?  

If they expect you to use Excel for statistics then its worth letting them
know that this would be a very bad idea as there are many short-comings,
some of which I've referenced at..

http://slack.ser.man.ac.uk/progs/stata/avoid_excel.html

Neil
Liviu Andronic
#
On 1/30/09, Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com> wrote:
Also do not miss the follow-up blog from the author, plus the the
related comments [1].
Liviu
[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/r-you-ready-for-r/ .
Liviu Andronic
#
On 1/30/09, Neil Shephard <nshephard at gmail.com> wrote:
Very neat resource; thanks.
Liviu

PS [hijack] Would it make sense to have it (or similar information)
assembled in a .pdf documentation file and made available on the
Contributed documentation section of R's web site?