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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?
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]
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.
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.