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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.)
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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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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
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.
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...
Check it out.
This according to the Netcraft link in the article. Lower TCO, better uptime...