I've considered making a similar proposal at my current outfit, and I would but for one thing: vast quantities of already-working ASP/VBScript code, and a team of developers who are Windows-heads, most of whom have never seen a line of Perl in their lives. They're all talented people, but this project is already too big and too critical for everybody to take time off and learn a new language.

My main frustration at the moment is that while Perl has things like Template, and Java has JSP/JSTL/custom tag libraries, ASP (sans .NET) has bupkes. Thus writing a large project in ASP that is maintainable and modular, is essentially impossible. I haven't tried PerlScript, but I don't see how it could fix this fundamental problem inherent in ASP as a platform.

Update: On second thought maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic. The problem with ASP is that it gives you no modularity except through <!--#include ...-->. But with Perl you could simply create a set of modules that lives outside your web tree. In fact, you could even create one module per page, and have the ASP simply call the module for all the processing work, and constrain itself to simple output.

Update: On third thought, Apache::ASP seems very cool. I would try it.

OTOH I've been told that Apache does well on Windows, so you may want to look that way.

Perl and ASP are not mutually exclusive, if you don't mind working with PerlScript.

PerlScript, which installs with ActivePerl, is suitable for the role as scripting language because it brings the power of Perl into the environment of ASP and there merges it with the services provided by ASP.

See the documentation at Activestate

There's also Apache::ASP, which I've been using for several years.

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What I can offer you is a little nugget. I would advise against the simple statement of, "Microsoft sucks." In a pinch it makes you look unprofessional. Pointy haired bosses like long, but simple explanations (counterintuitive). You mention that you get more support from PM than you do from MS. You could quantify that by saying something like, "Microsoft support will cost us money whereas the free support offered by Perl Monks is on par, if not better, than any paid support from Microsoft." Or something along those lines. Bosses like to lower their perceived costs and get the most bang for their buck.

Be sure that you present true facts though. You mention UNIX, so he'll certainly know his stuff, if not verify your information.

Have you listed the set of software that you would want to deploy? Are we talking Apache/mod_perl or are you sticking with IIS? If you are trying something new, can you assure him that the software can be administered?

Have you listed the positive points that your idea has over the alternate idea? Having done most of it is a plus point but is it prepared to the level where someone else can take over from you during the maintenance phase.

In short, you need a business case and a strategy.

It's essentially a rework of our current intranet. We'll be using the same box (2000, running IIS), so we won't have to order any new hardware.

If you must run on Windows consider a performance booster like PerlEx from ActiveState.

The breadth and quality of the perl modules have certainly impressed my ASP oriented co-workers. It's easy to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before you.

I also like to do the sysadmin work in perl. I find it more suitable and enjoyable than vbscript.