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Microsoft Rolls Out New Anti-Linux Ad Campaign
Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft has launched a new ad campaign that purports to give 'objective third-party information' comparing Windows to Linux." See the ad campaign website for more, uh, facts.
Looking at the first PDF file, it says "an IDC Whitepaper Sponsored by Microsoft." Exactly how is a study sponsored by MS considered to be an objective third-party study?
A study of total costs of ownership over five years for working corporate infrastructure shows that lower staffing expenses are a large part of an 11-22% cost advantage for Windows...
Where was Linux in 1998? Not even close to where it is today. If you compared Linux and Windows over the next 5 years, the TCO would favor Linux over Windows hands down.
If MS didn't take Linux seriously, it would not need to pay for such studies. Corporate execs are smart enough to do their own research and will use independent reports to make a decision - just as they do with their hardware, or car buying choices.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
From the "Get the Facts" site:
A study of total costs of ownership over five years for working corporate infrastructure shows that lower staffing expenses are a large part of an 11-22% cost advantage for Windows. For file-server workloads in particular:
Staffing expenses were 33.5% better. Training costs were 32.3% better.
Heh.. translation... Micromonkies are a dime a dozen because they don't actually have to know anything to get their "certification". I'd love to see somebody try to price out a clueful Microtech once. I'm sure the prices aren't too much cheaper than a *nix admin. One time, I actually had to sit and explain how a web server works to one of our "affordable" Microsoft certified admins here. That was probably the most pathetic point in both of our careers...
Another tasty quote from "Get the Facts":
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove...
I don't understand this at all. How can people take this crap seriously? That's like having McDonald's sponsor a study on the overall health value of its food. Are there actually people so monumentally STUPID in this world that they would believe a study sponsored by an organization with a vested interest in a certain outcome? We must find these people and run them down like animals before they breed!
What amazes me most, I believe, is that there really are people that horrendously dumb and, yet, we've managed to evolve to this point.... now these people are managers and they tie our evolution in red tape, so the human race is pretty much fucked from this point on....
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Well, IBM is hardly any more objective than Microsoft. They're rooting for an alternative to Microsoft, which makes them just as biased.
A disinterested third party probably don't even exist, but don't pretending IBM is unbiased, and that their whitepapers, etc. aren't filled with marketing bias as well.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they hide is vital.
Everyone knows that if you want objective, unbiased information, you find it in articles at places like Slashdot, ESPECIALLY in the comments after each article.
What's the big deal? A company is making their own products look good. It's not the company's job to give an impartial, or even fair, review of it's own products - it's going to publicize and advertise what makes it look good, and ignore everything else.
Anyone buying a product, including a CTO, should understand this. Are there going to be some dumb CTOs who fall for the hype? Probably.
So what? If Linux *IS* really better, the people who are smart enough to realize it will save a buncha money, and their competitors who don't realize it will be spending a bunch of money, and businesses who run Linux will have a better chance at prevailing. That's what free enterprise is about.
If someone doesn't run Linux, that's no skin off anyone's back but their own. Let them pay for their poor choice and move on with your life.
Unless, of course, Windows DOES have a lower total cost of ownership, in which case if you're a Linux zealot, you might be pissy. But we all know that's not true, right?
paintball
Who include IT decision makers and IT buyers for the 7 largest health care providers in the US. They have all been making noises about Linux, but nobody wants to be the first to take the plunge- I've been keeping a short mailing list updated with news items, like Israel asking for Thai pricing on MS office. This is the email I sent:
s p
----email below-------
You've been wondering when Linux will become mainstream enough for you to use it extensively in your organizations: I think you'll be interested in this recent response by Microsoft. When you have to buy research that says you have a better product, and the research companies need to skew the comparisons so heavily that it's obvious an apples-to-apples comparison would reflect unfavorably on the product you're pushing, the market has already made its choice; and then it's only a matter of time.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.a
My restatements of the "facts:"
1. FROM IDC: it's cheaper to hire someone straight out of college who earned an MCSE in an online training course than it is to hire someone with 5 years of real-world Unix/Linux sysadmin experience. Especially if all you consider is the direct compensation those people recieve, and you don't include the costs associated with systems downtime, security breaches, and the ratio of sysadmins to machines, which is typically lower than 1:20 in windows environments and 1:50 or higher in unix/linux environments.
2. FROM META: it's cheaper to buy 5 or 6 $5000-per-box commodity 4U windows servers than it is to buy a $470,000 proprietary RISC 42U mainframe, even if the software that runs on the mainframe costs you nothing extra. Especially when you don't consider the costs associated with downtime, redundancy, security, or the cost of buying new software for your six commodity boxes every 3 years. And never mind comparing the performance of free software on those same six commodity boxes- that's beside the point.
3. FROM GIGA: you can save development money by forcing all of your customers to upgrade so that their systems are compatible with yours. And if your customers don't want to upgrade, they don't really need to buy your stuff anyway.
all of these so-called "market research analyst" jokers should be ashamed to have their names associated with such obvious distortions of reality. I hope we never have to resort to this kind of chicanery to prove our value to our customers.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
A disinterested third party probably don't even exist, but don't pretending IBM is unbiased, and that their whitepapers, etc. aren't filled with marketing bias as well.
Perhaps, but any respectable IT professional will recall Microsoft's "history" and lovely business practices, especially with their hate for Linux and keep that in consideration when reading this FUD (or should I more appropriately say: BS)
However, as akedia has previously mentioned... the problem lies in the advertising to upper management.
# fuser -v
#
Surely you don't distrust common sense..."Wintel server 10 times less expensive to operate than Linux mainframe"...and that's only counting the hardware! When you throw in the software, that brings up the mainframe cost another $80! And it is irrelevent to consider the cost of the Windows software, just ask them. Leave it to Microsoft to discover that mainframes cost more than servers.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary