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Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts
richdun writes "Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux. They cite costs from more education, time developing, etc. Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant. "
"The world's largest software maker, which is facing increased competition from Linux -- the open-source software standard that can be copied and modified freely -- hired Giga Research, which found that licensing, associated software, maintenance, labor, and training was 25 percent to 28 percent cheaper on Windows for certain types of applications."
and
"Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks."
how can anyone trust crap like this? WHAT TYPE OF APPLICATIONS? WHAT SERVER TASKS?
Has anyone seen the report?
I'd like to know what the 12 projects were that were being compared to
see if the comparisons make sense.
Is there any chance at all that this is an actual apples to apples
comparison?
*sigh* back to work...
Says who?
Says Microsoft.
MS knows they haven't a chance at swaying anyone with half a clue, but unfortunately most of the people that sign the cheques don't.
Trolling is a art,
The study doesn't really have much to do with Linux, except that it was the OS used to host the J2EE apps. It's a study of the costs of developing web-based software for .Net vs. J2EE.
.NET platform and five of which use Linux.
.Net platform.
The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's
Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.
Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
Not that I hold much faith in 'interviews with 12 companies' as a solid foundation for a sweeping generalization on the costs of development, but it's easy, for me, to see how developing for a Java platform would be more expensive for some people than developing for the
-PainKilleR-[CE]
"Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux."
I had to go back and read this. What do you suppose are the certain cirucumstances? Is it when you have a room full of developers all clinging onto their copy of Visual Studio and sitting in front of a linux box?
I wish they had elaborated on this somewhat. I've been seriously trying to figure out for the last few minutes how I could develop cheaper on Windows and I cannot come up with one idea!
My initial instinct was that this was a combination of "absurd" and "special case so specific it's mostly useless". But then I started to think of a Slashdot thread from just a few weeks ago about the big worms that started recently...
The thread discussed how much cheaper it was to hire just any person and have [him|her] maintain the "Windows Server". Of course, an affordable admin in many small business cases would be unable to keep such a server patched well enough to fend off all the attacks and the machine would be compromised. The thread continued to say that if you compare a competant Windows admin with a competant *nix admin, not only are the costs similar but so is the security-- but you could have a Windows box up, running and making money with an incompetant admin.
No offense is intended, by the way, in calling such a person an incompetant admin, just that many small businesses can afford neither a service contract nor a full time "real admin", so someone who does not specialize in such tasks part-times it. This is a rare situation with *nix, where the barrier to entry of a steep learning curve usually causes entry admins to be better than Windows (I have no real evidence to back up this assertion, only personal observation). The theory is that a small business can't afford to keep 100% uptime, but can afford to go down for 12-24 hours.
This makes me wonder about programming on Windows in a general case. I can understand how someone can develop a Visual Basic program for cheaper than a C (or whatever) equivalent on Linux. Instead of comparing .NET to J2EE, as the article does, I'd be interested in seeing a problem solved by a beginning application developer in Windows (would (s)he choose Visual Basic?), another in Linux (C/C++ plus GTK or similar?), and then someone experienced on the two platforms solve the same problem and find out where the added costs present benefits. Can we tell the difference in benefits between the two skilled solutions or the two unskilled solutions? What benefits are gained by keeping one platform but redeveloping with a skilled developer?
From my past few years, I've found that RedHat and SuSe are much easier to maintain than the MS offerings, and installation seems easier and faster. Debian and OS X still lead on ease of maintenance.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I have to disagree strongly. I currently work in a shoop that develops applications in .NET and J2EE and we are always comparing and contrasting.
The real conclusion that we find is that Eclipse, ANT, XDoclet and JBoss make a much more usable and more powerful deveopment environment than anything available for Windows.
Our J2EE applications usually have a shorter time to market and a much happier customer when they don't feel like they have been taken avantage of in licensing fees.
However this holds true for J2EE in itself, there overall cost is greatly impacted by using JBoss and MySQL instead of Weblogix and Oracle(for example). It is all in how and what you are comparing.
We should be aware by now that any company can manufacture a TCO, even those behind Linux. The only valuable TCO is the one that your company produces and uses to make its decisions.
scott
Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant." Uh... You sound like its a bad thing they pointed this out? The whole /. community would be up-in-arms if they didn't point it out right off the bat.
While true that there is possible bias because Microsoft performed the study, it does not mean there was definite bias.
It's really .Net vs. J2EE. I'm not sure that .Net is cheaper to develop on than J2EE, but I am sure that there are less expensive ways to engineer software than J2EE. If price is the critical factor (which it must be, since it's the only actual information in the press release) you'd think that they'd compare to PHP/MySQL.
.Net? Did they choose projects that weren't deployed on a large scale in order to minimize the per-server costs of .Net/NT (which are extremely high)? Depending on the details, the report may really be saying '.Net Server and SQL Server is cheaper than WebLogic and Oracle', which really has nothing to do with Windows or Linux.
The lack of details makes me suspicions. Did they choose projects based on very expensive application servers and databases, rather than free alternatives, in order to offset the cost of Windows and
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Of course there is also the fact that lots of web development on Linux is done in much more productive languages, like Perl, Python, and PHP. Amazon and Yahoo (on FreeBSD) do it, so it's probably good enough for your lame little site too.
.Net... I'm sure its easy and powerful, but its a complete ripoff of J2EE. Plus, I hated being locked into Windows with no alternative, I don't want it repeated with .Net.
I can't find the post now, but on a recent thread on Slashdot someone made a pretty convincing argument that the oft repeated claim that Amazon have built their site on Perl/PHP is a misunderstanding based on someone seeing that Amazon were looking for Perl programmers. A small part of their site uses scripts, but most of the content and presentation is actually managed by JSP/Servlets/EJB.
I believe you are right when it comes to Yahoo though, they had a big power point-ish presentation somewhere explaining the different choices they had, why they went with PHP and the problems and benefits they had come up with.
Me, I like Java best, but as long as I'm not forced to use
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
> Take for instance a relatively simple GUI application. Say that it takes two weeks to develop the application under a free toolkit like GTK. Now say that it takes only one week to develop that same application under VB. If we use a $60k developer salary (which is only about half of what it actually costs to employ a developer), then we see that one week of time is worth ~$1154. After one month, the license for VB and Windows has quickly paid for itself.
In my experience, companies that want more bang for their buck should concentrate on optimizing their hiring practices rather than their tool purchases. A second-rate developer may only make 90% of what a first-rate developer does, but produces about half the results and lots more bugs. A third-rate developer might make 80% as much, and produce 1/5 the amount of code and vastly more bugs for the others to fix. A fourth-rate developer might actually drag the project backwards. And yet you still see these people on important projects.
If companies want to optimize their IT performance, there's something a heck of a lot more important than tools and platforms that they should concentrate on as the first-order fix. IMO.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
For medium-sized companies, costs for .NET-based applications totaled $661,012, compared with $881,445 for J2EE/Linux.
One has to question the study's methodology when it quotes costs to the nearest dollar. The study was based on phone interviews. The margin of error in these cost estimates must be at least +/- 10% (or $80,000 on the $881K figure).
I hate this. This is business. This is what business is. This is all it takes. Just fund the study that says what you want. On its face it looks rediculous, but who'll see it on its face? What you're really buying is the references to the study. The argument that "independent studies show..." All you need is that little bit of doubt, and you'll get sales.
We need stricter rules! This is how businesses succeed, and it's awful! I hate the SCO lawsh^Huit, I hate the RIAA lawsh^Hit, I can't stand these false studies and it's just infuriating.
Any reference to this study down the line should be required BY LAW to be labeled as "funded by Microsoft." Then there would be no manufactured doubt, and the study wouldn't happen in the first place, and businesses would have all these extra resources to spend on things like research and development, instead of things like fake false lying lies that confuse people and make it impossible to know what's really real and gee while they're scratching their heads let's just reach over and take the money out of their pockets. Monsters.
Let's get rid of the "D" and just tell businesses like Microsoft, "F U."
Monsters.
It may indeed be easier cheaper to develop apps under Windows when the shop is all Windows; but is it cheaper to build cross-platform, interoperable applications that can communicate and run across the multiple platforms that may be encountered within (and outside) an enterprise? I would argue that J2EE development platform is a far more cost-effective, scalable and portable approach than .NET/COM +/DCOM/etc. Microsoft can put on all of the XML window-dressing it wants, it doesn't change the Windows-centric underpinnings.
No, companies don't pull statistics out of their ass. They pull circumstances out of their ass to justify the statistics you want.
Microsoft didn't say, "Make J2EE look bad compared to us", they said "Make us look good in one of these (a, b, c) areas." The company then looked around for a competing product that overlapped one of those and didn't perform as well as the MS product in at least one aspect. That's how these paid-for studies work.
Just FYI, C# is pronounced "see sharp"
:
That's what Microsoft says, but any musician will tell you that a sharp sign has upright verticals and slanted horizontals - a pound sign has slanted verticals and level horizontals. There's a separate unicode and HTML character for sharp, but Microsoft uses pound.
As an aside, why do some people say "pound" to refer to "#"?
It's a grocer's pound, not a pound-stirling, as in
banannas 5 #
oranges 2 #
I guess it was faster than writing 'lbs' - never been a grocer, but I've seen the old guys write orders on a paper bag.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I realise this will gain the hate of the majority of Slashdot's posters, but I have to make the point that my company (i.e. the R&D dept - i.e. me and a couple of other geeks) has done a fairly in-depth study into moving our internal apps to Linux. Or rather to start developing onto Linux rather than continuing on the MS treadmill.
The fact is that at the moment costs for obtaining Linux skills so far outweigh the licencing costs of using MS that it is still worth using MS. This INCLUDES all the licencing costs of both the new servers and the cost of the commercial closed-source app when applied to an open-source app...
The important point here is that just about all of our IT function is outsourced - so we see costs directly rather than by using internal staff (who are "free" ).
I realise you are probably spluttering by now, but just think... You can hire a low-IQ MCSE to follow the wizards and work through the install routines for a heck of a lot less time than an expert is required to configure and set up a Linux server and add an open source platform, and then configure and sort it out.
Please remember that outside of IT firms, the driving attitude is to get the system working now, rather than working right. Apart from financial systems (e.g. payroll) you can always backfill later to fix issues - so the up-front costs really do become meaningful.
MS really do know this - and know just how far they can push us. Linux will get better - and the skilled staff required will get cheaper. That will simply drive down MS's prices. At the moment - it is cheaper to have a wizard-driver and pay the licence fees. Linux-skilled staff just cost too much and take too long.
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.