Verizon Switches Programmers to Linux

wackysootroom writes: "According to this article at News.com, Verizon saved $6 million in equipment costs by switching its programmers from UNIX and Windows workstations to Linux workstations running OpenOffice. The article says that the average cost per desktop workstation was cut from $22,000 to $3,000." jeffmurphy noted the same story, and wonders "What kind of (Windows) desktops were they buying previously at an average cost of $22k? It seems like software alone wouldn't account for that big of a cut."

Comments

EASILY cost $22,000/workstation

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Two years ago the HP C3600 workstation, single-CPU 1gig RAM dual 9gig SCSI hard drives went for just over $20,000. Add in hardware and software maintenance, then any upgrades/software (like HP Ansi C compiler) and $22,000 is not a lot of money.

These machines have been HPs Workstation line for a while, it looks like they were with HP, so yes, they're asving $19,000/desktop.

Savings.

[saintlupus]

Verizon saved $6 million in equipment costs by switching its programmers from UNIX and Windows workstations to Linux workstations running OpenOffice.

I'm surprised they didn't just fire all the programmers, to save the maximum amount of cash.

--saint
(bitter ex-Verizon employee.)

Verizon to Microsoft....

[wowbagger]

"Can you hear me now? GOOD!"

Re:Programmers and *Office?

[ptomblin]

You've obviously had very limited experience in the real world. Big companies don't work like garage shops. Generally, the bigger the company, the more likely you are to be bombarded with documents written in Word, Power Point presentations, MS Project files, etc, from the ever increasing levels of management above you, secretaries below you, and ancilliary support personell (graphic designers, QA departments, documentation, tech support, etc) beside you. 50% of it is crap that you can safely ignore, 35% of it is crap that you can't tell if it's crap until you read it, and the other 15% actually applies to you.

Besides MS Office files, my current nightmare consists of Lotus Notes, the single worst computer application ever written, and Photoshop. Thankfully, Office, Notes and now Photoshop all run under Crossover Office.

And right after you figure out how to use a VPN to log in from on the road to check your email, some bozo, possibly the CEO, will send out a 50Mb power point presentation with sound and cutesy clip art and animations to tell you what could have easily fit in a 1K ascii text file.

Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy

[kawika]

>> Microsoft developer licenses can be pricey

Sounds like you didn't know that developers can get every business and OS product that Microsoft makes for every international language in the MSDN Subscription on DVD for $2,500. Most US developers would only need the Professional subscription which is $1,200. That includes MS Office, Visual Studio and all the compilers, Project, SQL Server, SDKs, DDKs, every version of Windows since 95, and a year of updates. The MSDN versions of most products allow 10 licenses, which is plenty for most developers. The price of the Windows licenses alone far exceeds the cost of the subscription.

>> Later, when and if they got enough sales, they'd reconsider XP.

I don't know their application so I can't say for sure, but in most cases that's ass-backwards. You usually want to build your product for the biggest market first.

differences in how processors treat numbers

[Skapare]

Fundamental differences in how Intel and HP processors treat binary numbers meant that some software was very difficult to translate, leading to delays that kept newly purchased equipment idle. "It's now working, but what a mess," the employee added.

Translation:

We were dumb and wrote endian-dependent code, such as accessing multi-byte numbers by loading one character at a time. We assumed the high-order bytes were first, but with the Intel processor, it's the other way around. So we had to go back and re-do it all over again. Don't worry, we'll find some way to blame management. They told us to write endian-dependent code; yeah, that's right.