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Amazon: Linux Saved Us Millions
Ian_Bailey writes: "ZDNet news presents another chapter in the Windows vs. Linux debate. Amazon.com claims that by switching to Linux, they were able to "cut technology expenses by about 25 percent, from $71 million to $54 million."" Lots of little bits in there. Nothing really new, but it's still nice.
Article at Infoworld tells how Boscov's Dept Store is saving a bundle.
This article is really more about IBM, but mentions Winnebago the motor home maker switching from NT also.
"Linux as pork bellies" the os as a commodity.
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
too bad that they only supply patches when the problem is absolutely demanding it. I don't really see MS going out and patching all these machines.
From the article MS had very little to say about this whole ordeal. They kept going back to the "it's free, sure, but you will pay in the long run." no. I will never pay. It is going to cause me the same, if not less problems in the long run, especially w/new licensing issues.
As far as it is usually for low end servers. Anyone see the IBM commercials lately?
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
Interesting comment from MS's Miller, seeing as how so many of us running MS servers have wasted untold numbers of hours fighting off the Code Red & variant worms. Yeah, there was a patch available before the storm came (and my servers were ready, anyway), but if MS is claiming that it's their "job" to manage updates & patches, they're not doing a very good one, IMHO.
(1) Hasn't really helped their stock price. They are still not profitable, and won't be for a while. They say that pro forma profitability should happen next quarter.
(2) For curious folks, here is Amazon's Linux page.
(3) Amazon uses Linux despite attacks by high profile people. However, when you get down to it, it is about money. They don't really give a shit about Linux itself. They don't have feelings for it. Don't forget that. It is about the money. (And the nookie. They did it all for the nookie, the nookie.)
How to Download YouTube Videos
I've been thinking awhile about making an interactive price comparison web page for my website that would allow users to see how much they could save by switching from Windows to Linux. This is just a formative idea at the moment - if people have suggestions for this, please email me. Right now I'm thinking of something along the lines of a set of "wizard" pages that ask the user a series of questions about what software they want to run (and what hardware they have available) and keeps a running tally of the savings they would get with Linux over Windows.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
When is someone going to build a new type of machine architecture (i.e. not Sparc, PC, or PPC, but maybe based on one of those chips) that is optimized for absolute reliability and the things that machines need to do today, and then use Linux as a base for their operating system?
That's where the real value of Linux to the world is. You don't need 2+ years to write a proprietary operating system; someone else has done all the grunt work for you. Same goes for BSD, except BSD is more polished.
I'm glad a big consumer name company is openly saying that they've switched to Linux and saved money. But this is just the beginning. As the slump proceeds and managers want to streamline expenses, Linux is the logical alternative. Most companies that don't write Windows only software are already using a generic library that doesn't tie them to windows. It might take a bit of a startup time to switch to Linux initially but once done, it's smooth. Linux is already a pleasure to program in and it'll only get better with time.
This announcement is a promotion for linux in the server market, not workstation. The END USER, as you put it, does not interface with the OS directly. You are arguing as if amazon put the OS on every amazon users' home computers, overwriting windows or something. This change has already happened, and if you go to the site from whatever OS is your favorit, then you will notice no difference.
I personally think linux is an awesome server OS. I find that it's interface, especially remote, is far better than Windows, BSD, Solaris, and other UNIX systems. You can't do crap with windows remotely, plus it's proven unstable. With other OSes, like Solaris, their stock tools are horrible. Maybe it's because I absolutely love Gnu tools, but I find it to be a pain in the ass to use Solaris out of the box. And I don't want to spend 2 days installing Gnu tools, etc. BSD is better, but still not there. It's tools share a lot in common with Solaris and other commercial UNIX systems. Give me a box, whether it be x86, PowerPC, Alpha or SPARC, and I'll have you a fully tweaked server OS on it in much less time than any other OS.
Plus go compare a service contract from redhat to one from Microsoft or Sun. If you can't see plain numbers...
I am wondering if you have any experience at all adminstrating web servers...
Nic
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
How can he ignore the fact that Red Hat is doing that for them? Besides, of course, that he is the Master of MS Fud at the moment, being quoted with several misleading and plainly false statements in the news lately.
While Red Hat offers some of those services, it's difficult to ensure that software packages updated frequently by hundreds of people around the globe work well together, Miller said.
It clearly difficult for Microsoft to make sure that their hundreds of software packages produced by thousands of employees in Washington work well together. Apparently the tactic here is to discredit open source devlopment in general as being some sort of complex house of toothpicks.
From another story, Doug Miller, director of competitive strategy for the software giant, says he thinks Linux isn't a long-term bet for the data center. "I just don't see it taking over the world," he says.
Anyway, apprently Doug Miller is the MS pap of the moment. They seem to have a stream of dorks, each one heading the FUD campaign of the moment.
Anyway, the story is good news I reckon. I think more and more companies are going to realize that switching to stable, free, open software is only a winning propsition, and we'll be seeing more of this as the bean counters take notice.
Juln
"ever try to figure out what the latest patches for an NT server with a sideline sql server 2000 should be? Its practically a freaking fulltime job!).... "
yes, you asshole, it's a fulltime job.
it's called being a sysadmin.
deal with it.
i was talking with a friend of mine who's company is doing an e-comm software deal with amazon, and he described amazon as "the worst example of best in breed that you could look at" - i guess they've taken lots of different best in breed approaches, but not really had a direction or a clear methodology and it has hurt them.
on the plus side, he did say that they had made inroads into cleaning up, and are big on using XML between all systems for easy interfacing. and that they do a LOT of things really well - i mean, how many other sites have link ads that know who you are? thats a pretty strong set of CRM they got running. sure theres a lot of crap and a lot of silliness, but they gots some stuff thats good too.
And I don't think they're going to make nearly as much money as they expect from XBox, MSN, or .Net. Their expertise at embracing and extending does not give them much leverage in a market (gaming) where key players have already solved all of the problems and have market share. I predict they are going to lose, and lose big.
I submitted this nearly a year ago and it was ignored.
While I could not disclose material information about the change, I did submit an item reporting the change and cited the netcraft statistics as evidence. Twice. It was ignored both times by slashdot editors, even as Microsoft was claiming that no major sites used Linux. This was the perfect example and the editors ignored it. Way to go editors!
This recent article suggests the move to Linux was recent. That is not accurate. If you look at old netcraft data, you will see this change occurred way back in September 2000.
Saying Amazon doesn't use much Microsoft is a gross understatement.
Anyone suggesting the use of Microsoft products in the datacenter at Amazon gets laughed at. Aside from mandatory/proprietary crap necessary to serve up Microsoft E-books, their stuff isn't even close to being acceptable in that environment.
Want to know why some big sites run Microsoft? Because they get the software AND hardware free or are otherwise PAID to run it. Even if Microsoft paid Amazon (which I believe they would gladly do), the thought of running their stuff there is laughable at best.
Amazon would like you to believe going to Linux was hard. It was easy. It totally kicks Tru64's ass (DIE Tru64, DIE!).
> In a corporate Linux environment you still have
> to pay for the staff, sysadmins, distributions
> [most likely Amazon bought a few copies of what
> ever linux.dist they have], etc..
Licensing will obviously be much cheaper, even if you use $racle. Buying CD's for $1 a pop is cheaper than site licenses for 2k Server, no matter how you try to spin it.
> The OS is still very premature
It's been around for ten years. I believe that's longer than NT 4.0 - when did 3.51 come out? It's been running on my P133 24/7 for the last three.
> and doesn't really compete with Windows in
> terms of END USER usability.
Gnome/KDE booting by default are almost there.
> Sure Linux may be a faster/stabler[?? VM
> problems?] OS, but it is not an easier to use
> OS, and in the end, for 99% of the users that
> is what counts.
I still can't get W2k to recognize two video cards for a dual-head display, whereas I downloaded and built XFree86 4.0.1 with Xinerama and got it working in about a day.
W2k at home used to crash every time I started RealPlayer.
And recently posted to BugTraq, the following code will crash NT/2k/XP (at least on the two machines I've tried, YMMV):
#include
int main(void)
{
printf("\t\b\b ");
return 0;
}
This is not accurate. 'zon was a Tru64/Alpha shop (you'll find that if you dig for articles). When Amazon first formed, the company ran on Sun hardware. That was quickly replaced with Alpha.
Sun was never in contention or considered for the systems which now run Linux at Amazon. They are a dead-end proprietary path compared to Intel ($$$/MIP).
The big battle was Compaq/Alpha/Tru64 vs. HP/IA32/Linux.
Moving from one proprietary platform to another would be foolish.
Much of this is just speculation by news orgs that can't get specific info.
the third machine at amazon.com (if by machine we mean something with a hard drive rather than an X terminal) was a pentium running slackware. its name was "ccmotel", as in "credit cards check in, but they don't check out". it had a serial line running to the solaris/sparc system that had the webserver on it, and a 1-way custom protocol for moving credit card data to its dbm-based database. the protocol had no provision for retrieving credit card numbers (it was 1 way, remember), so sneaker net was required to get them out: you loaded a floppy into the machine (remember those?) and ran a command that filtered the files on the floppy, substituting our credit card identifiers with real numbers. unless you had physical access to that machine, there was no way you could ever get credit card data from a disk drive at amazon. it was a critical part of the early infrastructure of amazon. how do i know? i built ccmotel...
The articles are wrong. Amazon was Tru64/Alpha, not Solaris/Sun.
I find that it's interface, especially remote, is far better than Windows, BSD, Solaris, and other UNIX systems.
Uh ok Tridia VNC has a port for AIX and Solaris as well as Linux. SSH is the same on any Unix. FreeBSD's package collection has a vncserver in its ports collextion. You can install BASH on BSD or Solaris. What exactly does Linux offer that any other modern Unix doesn't in terms of remote administration. Heck, you can even get openssh and Cygwin on a 2k boc for most of your administrative needs. Sure you may like RPMs better than the FreeBSD ports collection, although I don't really see why. However, Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD all provide easy means of allowing you to VNC in and use your windows manager of choice or ssh in and use your prompt of choice.Finally, unlike linux, bourne scripts are run through a proper borune shell and not a bloated bash shell.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Check it out.
This according to the Netcraft link in the article. Lower TCO, better uptime...