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.

Comments

quote of the day.

[garcia]

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?

Feeble Response from MS

[DouglasA]

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.

Boo! Boo hoo? Random Thoughts by WebWord!

[webword]

(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.)

CNet Article

[Tim Macinta]

There's also a nice CNet article on the same topic.

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.

Re:CNet Article

[mackertm]

I'm so glad you pointed this out. It seems there are endless comparisons between Windows and Linux in terms of cost. But I think the thing that gets overlooked the most is how good the IT staff at any particular company/institution might be. If your support staff is good and knows Linux, I can certainly see where it would be possible to save heaps of money running Linux. But if your technology people don't know Linux, then just moving to Linx (be it only in the server space, or desktops, too) wouldn't save any money. The TCO in that case would be extraordinarily high. "Oh shit, we just installed Linux... Nothing works like we expected... What do we do now?"

I think the biggest single factor in any Windows vs. Linux cost debate shouldn't be the simple fact that Linux is free. It should center around how competent an IT department you have, and whether or not they can pull off a Linux deployment that would save a particular company money.

For reference, I'm more of a Windows person. The college I work at exclusively uses Windows computers. I run an IIS server for my personal website without any trouble. I have been starting to learn Linux, but right now I don't know nearly enough to successfully use it to run my website. And I think that's what it comes down to... The right people with the right knowledge can make Linux a LOT cheaper than Windows. If you don't have those people with that knowledge then it makes more sense to stick with Windows.

amazon has used linux from the start

[paulbd]

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...

Uptime is increasing

[sneakerfish]

It seems their uptime is increasing since they switched:

Check it out.

This according to the Netcraft link in the article. Lower TCO, better uptime...