It took me a few years to learn to communicate to middle and upper management in getting the tech goodies I have today. But before I pass on my little nuggets of wisdom, allow me to introduce my position.

I manage the IT facilities a faculty (of approx 1000 students and 100 staff) within a British university located in Malaysia and I have to contend with a "big brother" who provides our network & internet access along with login privileges. My users look up to me and my small team to prevent "big brother" from bullying them into submission (my users generally have more computing freedom than other faculties so in essence my dept is treated like the red headed step child).

The university in general (the main campus in the UK and all its branch campuses) has been recently directed to switch 100% to Microsoft & .NET for all it's solutions. I've managed to retain my Linux & LAMP servers within that environment and not to mention got a few new tech goodies along the way.

The secret to it all is that management thinks in (literally) dollars (in my case Ringgit) and cents, so it would in your benefit to brush up in that area. Explain to management the costs involved in the "manufacturing" of a Linux distro, and that how it's a community effort hence why it is given away for "free". If they are uncomfortable with the fact that support is "sporadic" give them the option of going with a branded distro (i.e. Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu) they will have to pay for support but support IS guaranteed.

Next make a comparison on the costs of moving to MS .NET vs. staying with your LAMP solution. Talk in terms of man hours needed to setup the MS .NET (translating to costs), personnel training to handle the .NET systems, software costs (MS licenses don't come cheap) AND annual maintenance fees on the .NET systems (some MS licenses require a annual fee). Don't forget to mention/factor the costs of NEW hardware for the .NET systems; from experience LAMP systems can function perfectly fine on under-speced machines for years without giving any signs of stress when compared to MS based systems.

Next talk about redundancies in your IT department (I'm assuming you are NOT an army of one), with switching over to .NET many personnel will lose their function in the organisation and this will lead to either:

1. Retraining of the personnel for better efficiency
2. Fire the old and hire new, which means for about a period of 3 months the new guys will be learning the ropes of the organisation, translating again to 3 months of minimal productivity. Not to mention the periods when a position cannot be filled because a suitable candidate can't be found. Also it *MIGHT* cost the organisation more in terms of salary to hire a nrew suitable person versus keeping the current person around and re-training him/her (and don't forget to compare it against NOT moving).

Lastly mention about the transition period on how every one MUST transition over to the newer system and learn to use it. Translating to lost revenue from loss of productivity from the staff. If your core business is web related, do a business generation analysis from 1 minute of up time versus 1 minute of down time (in relation to the system being down for transition) and don't forget to include the time when the team work out the kinks in the system after it has gone live.

Remember that most people in management didn't get their tech trench badge, they are in their position to make sure the company's bottom line stays in the black and nicely elevated. Learn to speak their language and you'll most probably get what you want. Best of all, if you can work this out with your CEO/President and he/she agrees I doubt any other manager is going to question the leader's decision.