I think there are open source alternatives that are out there that haven't been broadly adopted because of a lack of PR. SugarCRM and Asterisk come to mind. That improves over time.

What are the favourite and least favourite parts of your job as a systems administrator for Google?

What I love about being a system administrator is automating things so that they take less time. Whether I have automated something that saves time for myself, my team, or my users I always feel like doing a "victory lap" every time I see my code go into production. The least favourite part of my job? I never enjoy writing budgets and budget proposals. I find it tiresome. It's important, but it puts me to sleep.

What is your favourite language to work with?

My favourite language is Perl, but I'm learning Python because it seems to encourage better, cleaner, coding practices.