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Latest Ballmergram Bashes Linux TCO
Phoe6 writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has used the software giant's latest executive email to stoke up Microsoft's fight against the rise of Linux. The 2,600 word missive was titled 'Customer focus: comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX'. In it, Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's controversial Get The Facts campaign. Zdnet has its report here." Linuxworld also has a story.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Whoda thunk that it'd be more expensive to entirely change your infrastructure from Windows to Linux than it would be to simply upgrade to a new version of Windows????? Wow! We should install Windows everywhere!
Who here also thinks it'd be just as expensive to convert from Linux to Windows?
It seems like they think that if they say Windows is more secure enough times it will become a reality. They should put more focus on developing secure software, than simply paying lip service to secure software.
--
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!
What would we expect of Ballmer? "Okay, okay, I give in, Linux is actually better, cheaper, more stable, faster" and so on? Of course not. He is lying, true, but that is his job (used car salesmen, bow before Ballmer, for he is your god).
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
I don't think I understand your point. Its expensive to switch from linux to windows or visa versa. So the report says that if you are already a microsoft customer, don't bother spending the extra money it takes to switch. Do you think they are saying that makes Windows a better operating system than Linux? Or are they extending the point too far to imply that starting from scratch, Windows should always be installed? I don't get it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
It could be true If you take into account the custom applications that may be running on windows now. If you have to migrate from Windows to Linux you also need to develop those custom applications to run on Linux. May be they are taking that into considerations. But if it is just office applications(Like MS Word) that should not so much costly as there are Free alternatives available and are as (In some cases More) efficient as MS Office.
I wonder if their TCO figures include rebooting all your servers weekly to install new patches...
Oh, and let me guess... the Linux vulnerability count includes all issues found in an entire distribution, while the Windows count includes only the base OS. I'll bet we'd get a much more accurate picture if they included IIS, SQL Server, Outlook, etc.
Seriously though, lower vulnerabilities? Where the hell did that come from.
I've seen a number of studies that run something like this:
Windows
Linux
Not sure if this is the case here, but I suspect so.
Just the cleanup costs? How about the cost of damage that those can do ?
Yeah, that takes the cake. But it's worded pretty cleverly, dontcha agree? "About three years ago, we made software security a top priority." Notice they don't say they've actually done anything about it, they just say they've made it "a priority". Hell, anyone can do that.
Beautiful piece of marketing doublespeak.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win."
I'd say we're well into Stage 3.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I read this when it came out, and read it once again now. It is complete FUD.
of note:
They only speak of conversion costs, never upkeep. Conversion is always expensive. Have them look at conversion plus 5 years.
Look at the cost of downtime. They do not mention what the cost is to the core business.
Cost of hardware.
The hardware needs for windows platforms is much more robust compared to platforms for Linux. That's another trick they do... they say, you need P4s and we need P4s... not really. My new server (i.e. jenny's old laptop) is running off of 128 mb of ram and 600 MHz. It is considered overpowered for command line only freebsd.
Their notes:
Few companies know what they're really spending. Only five of the 14 kept detailed metrics - and each of those five found Linux more expensive (5% to 20%) than their current Microsoft environments. => Which 5 companies? Cost is one thing, but what are the potential returns? I wont be running any ecommerce website on IIS. Those credit cards will be jacked so quick.
Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for Linux than Windows. What are we planning? => As a counter example... lets talk about active directory migration.
Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux. => Unknown to me, but I bet this is true due to simple supply and demand. However, if Linux had the marketplace and Microsoft was smaller it would probably reverse
All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources. => What is qualified? I every MCSE is not qualified.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
Okay, but remember, they will then come up with the argument that the only reason that these things are not on Linux is because the people that write the trojans, worms, viruses, and spyware target the largest audience.
Nope. If you read the letter you might notice they came up with an even better one.
Ballmer - And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as pernicious as their UNIX and Windows counterparts - and in many cases they are much more stealthy."
So you see, Linux has all the same problems as Windows. They're just hidden better! Fear the unknown!
But that aside the reason why I as an IT guy am not impressed by Windows is that it is difficult to administer remotely (when Microsoft shows me a version of Windows that I can admin over a 9600 BPS serial link with a CLI I'll be interested) and the fact that I don't want to be Microsoft's bitch. If I don't like IBM's Linux solution I can buy from HP or SGI. If I don't like Microsoft Windows I'm stuck with it.
Microsoft's history of price increases is also an issue. When Windows NT 3.51 came out I could purchase it for $95 dollars a license at Academic discount, NT 4.0 cost 135 dollars, Windows 2000 and XP are $165. Microsoft will counter that Windows XP is more functional than NT was and that that justifies the extra price, but my hardware is more functional than it was 8 years ago when NT 3.51 came out and it's cheaper, why hasn't Microsoft's operating system followed the same evolution? (that's a rhetorical question, but in case you're confused it's because they have a monopoly) In addition I take all of Microsoft's claims of increased functionality driving software price with a grain of salt as a lot of what those new releases deliver is bug fixes over the prior version.
Even if Microsoft can deliver solutions for the same price as Linux a lot of companies are going to look at Microsoft's recent history and say "Do we really want to be their bitches?" and when the answer is "no", go with that Linux solution.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I think:
simple == good security
So I like the classic Unix security scheme on Linux.
Windows has no equivalent. It's tricky, you can't see what's happening at a glance.
It seems like they think that if they say Windows is more secure enough times it will become a reality
This really works... for a recent example look no further than WMD... everyone suspected that it was bogus, but found the media campaign somehow compelling. Sad to say, marketting is very powerful
They should put more focus on developing secure software, than simply paying lip service to secure software.
It would be very naive to believe that a company (whose loyality is to shareholders), will sit still on such a burning issue. They have finally realized that they most do this, but it will take years. In the mean time, lip-service it all they can offer.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
In terms of talking about the operating system itself, Microsoft's statements come across as the same FUD we'd expect. However there is one thing I noticed in this letter which caused me to think a bit...
"All of the major Linux vendors...have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
What this means I think is that Microsoft can't compete with the *operating system itself* on technical merit, and they know this. However, what it sounds like they're realising that they *can* do is exploit corporate ambivalence about Linux based on the major distributor companies' pricing structures.
I understand that in order to make money with Linux, it's always been about the services. What I've also heard talked about several times recently though is how greedy people think Red Hat in particular are becoming. If this is true, RH and the other companies IMHO need to be careful.
Microsoft as I said know they cannot compete with Linux based purely on technical merit. But if Red Hat and the other companies introduce overinflated pricing structures with regards to the services, this will largely erradicate the "free as in beer" element of Linux, at least as far as the corporate mind is concerned. If it gets to the point where Microsoft can compete based on *initial price*, (and no, I'm not talking about ongoing license fees here...I'm talking about the price of the *initial* contract/box/whatever) then they could even afford to cease caring about people knowing that Linux is a technically stronger solution than Windows. All they need to do is sell someone on the idea that an *entry* price is cheaper than the initial price one of the Linux companies is charging. Based on what I've heard about Microsoft's contracts, I'm guessing they could very easily do this.
1) Offer a corporation an initial deal comparable to the Linux vendors in terms of unit volume/amount of support, but at a marginally lower price, and of course with Windows rather than Linux.
2) Fill said corp's heads with usual BS about "independent" (wink, wink) surveys/studies and so on to grease the deal.
3) Include a fixed term no-vendor-transfer clause in the contract...basically specifying that they can't migrate for a certain time period. 5 years, 10 if they can get away with it.
4) Once the time period for the Linux "clone contract" runs out, then we're in purely Microsoft time, and can then commence MS fun and profit. Jack up the price for additional support, service packs, bug fixes or whatever, and justify this on the basis that these weren't mentioned in the original contract, or that these are "optional extras." (Even if they are actually mandatory to keep the corp's machines functioning) Use extra context-specific BS as necessary.
Any client company unfortunate enough to fall into this trap would basically be screwed for the duration of the contract.
That "Windows may have more virii because it is more popular" myth is bunk.
If you check netcraft, you'll see that currently Apache is more popular a webserver than IIS. So, shouldn't Apache have more vulnerabilites issues that IIS?
However, I do agree with you on the group issue. However, I wonder if this is something that might be addressed with SElinux.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The very fact that Ballmer wants to take on Linux gives people the impression that Linux is a worthy opponent.
It's the same with with US presidential debates, where the incumbent usually tries to negotiate his or her way out of as many debates as possible. Why? Because the mere fact that a challenger shares a stage with a sitting president tends to help the challenger.
The lesson those of us who use Linux in our daily work, and who see the value in things like open source and open standards, is just to hang loose.
Ballmer is offering free publicity.
---- Richard L. Goerwitz III
As a systems admin, you don't have to fuss around with kernels, you can also decide on one distribution if you want. Most distros are freely available on the net for download, so a discount isn't even needed. You can install it, set it up. run updates on it once in a while. Baseline security analyzer? Give me a break. Run a port scanner like nmap on the machine and run 'ps aux' to get a complete list of processes. Keep track of these and most security problems should be avoidable. Fedora does this, Red Hat does this, SuSE does this, the latest Ubuntu does this. You can use yum or apt, how much time does it take anyway? Dependencies are also handled by yum and apt, so no problems there. All these work.
Here's my question... if you're a systems administrator that believes that Windows 2003 is so easy to use, and takes little time, then why not use that extra time to learn the other side of things? You might actually like it if you read enough. Imagine the advantages of having both Windows and Linux on your resume. Or are Windows problems a little too much that you don't have time to learn? Imagine how much money your boss could save if you spent that extra time learning. Then he could get you to download Linux distros, and use those, without having to pay for additional licenses. Imagine the possibilities of opening your mind to new knowledge.
As a systems administrator and business owner, all I can say to you is... sheesh.
"All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
...more expensive (5% to 20%) than...
...took 5% to 25% longer...
...three to four times more expensive...
So Microsoft provides these extras for free?
I've read the warranty from Microsoft's products. They don't warrant shit. Nor do I expect to see a pro bono Microsoft lawyer pop out of thin air if someone makes a copyright claim regarding their products.
And customer support?
Give me a break.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release.
You could have fooled our IT department. Because of the shifting sands beneath the code in various Microsoft Office versions, we (a national laboratory) have had to recode all of our Word macros and all of our Access apps everytime there is a "new" release of Office.
And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Not because of superior technology, but because of integration hooks and low-ball initial pricing. When you swallow the Microsoft hook, you take the line and sinker with it. Regurgitating all of that 'infrastructure' will inevitably take more money to change. That would be true shifting from a pure *NIX environment to a Windows-centric environment.
Shifting from specifics to global ranges indicates they have no idea what the cost structures are. They are cherry picking their report figures and glossing over their own problems.
Hardly surprising for a marketing letter.
But keep in mind everyone: Windows is Free!.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Spoken like a man who has never used linux.
"don't want to fuss around with kernels, deciding between a distribution, and all that jazz. "
Futzing with kernels? Who does that anymore? How many times do you decide between distributions? I'll give you a hint, once.
"Sure, I could use apt and the others, but it just takes too much time, and you have to worry about various dependencies and what not."
Who the hell modded you up after saying something this collosally ignorant. Apt takes too much time? You have to worry about dependencies with apt? What the fuck? The parent does not know what they are talking about or is lying mod them down people.
"I'd like nothing better than to run a Unix variant, but until you bring me a monolithic distribution that just works,"
What you mean like debian or suse or something?
"I'll have to stay Microsoft for now."
Yes you do that. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
evil is as evil does
The "indemnification" point is serious FUD based on way overblown fears of end user patent liability.
In fact, the most likely "patent" scenario is the one we have today: i.e., patent "hold-ups" in which 2-bit "inventors" demand "royalties" from software users, based on patents they probably never should never have been granted. These patent owners want to bleed a lot of companies for relatively small bucks each. They do not in fact want to actually shut anyone down; they just want to collect a small "tax" from a big population. These are nuisances to big companies (the usual targets of such claims), and certainly potential expense items, but NOT the sort of thing that should make a strategic difference in one's technology direction.
All that being said, offering uncapped indemnification to customers against potential software patent claims is a valid selling point. Of course, Microsoft software is no less vulnerable to these claims than anyone else's, and the email was a little unclear whether the "uncapped" amount was for the costs of legal defense (attorneys' fees) or that plus the actual liability to the patent owner.
Microsoft's offer of indemnification is credible if for no other reason than Microsoft's huge financial liquidity. In the open source world, there are also a few companies, such as IBM, that have good financial credit and can credibly make a comparable offer. But there are quite a few providers who are not in a position to do this.
Perhaps the answer for the others would be to offer reasonably priced group insurance from a financially sound insurer . . . IF the market considers that a response like that is even necessary.
Ballmer's missive landed in my mailbox last night (somehow it escaped my spam filter), and I wrote this response. I know no one there will read it, but it was still fun to write.
Don't read what Ballmer wrote since (IMHO) the focus is NOT on lower TCO...instead read in to what Ballmer meant. This is a public salvo thrown out that clearly signals their intention: they're coming after Linux and open source hard.
Read in to what Ballmer meant when he said, "Given the growing concern among customers about intellectual property indemnification, what's the best way to minimize risk?" Read this and then think about it.
With the way some defects are published, you often see the same Linux defect published multiple times because it exists in multiple Linux distributions. I've seen "statistics" that claim enormous defect counts that include defects across all Linux distros, where defects are not only aggregated from a whole bunch of irrelevant software, but also counted multiple times.
This gives Microsoft a huge margin in which to twist their statistics.
Well, that actually isn't why a lot of people use DFS. We have sites over 38 remote sites, and we want them all to have access to the same documents / software / etc. We use DFS so that we can tell people 'go to your * drive' and find this document (usually stuff that doesn't change a lot). DFS allows us to use sites and services to point them to the closest domain controller with copies of that information. This means we save a TON of bandwidth by not having users all come back to the home office to get their documents.
Of course, you can do the same thing in *nix using some other stuff, but it isn't just about storage.
So basically you're lazy and incompetant, unwilling to investigate solutions and make a decision.
I can download Fedora Core for free. Or Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, ... the list goes on.
Oh, but wait, you can't make a decision.
More laziness and incompetance. You don't pay attention to advisories? Make sure your setup is tuned for your installation?
So you just want a system that lets you be a lazy, incompetant administrator, because you don't want to have to do anything other than click a button now and again?
Linux actually is easy to administer. A bit of setup and one or two people can maintain a thousand or more Linux boxes. Without that much headache. Sure, they'll have to know Linux, how to use the tools, and maybe even be good. But paying 2 people $80k a year is cheaper than paying 20 people $30k a year.
Ignorance. Anyone who is familiar with these tools knows that dependency maintenance is part of what they do.
Please do. We don't need lazy, incompetant idiots running our critical boxes.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I can't believe how businesses have been hoodwinked into believing that "TOTAL Cost" has a horizon of 1-3 years (whatever the frequency of windows updates is these days). If they intend to be around for decades more, than they should have some vision of those decades to come. Of course switching is expensive! But upgrades to Windows are generally more expensive than upgrades to even commercially-supported versions of Linux.
This gap could potentially change if MS suddenly moved to a subscription model--presumably they'd see that by keeping subscription costs low "enough" people would stay locked in. But it is also easier to justify the insignificant monthly or anual costs of a subscription than large expenditutres every few years for upgrades.
The Community needs a study of annually amortized UPGRADE costs for different platforms. Then businesses could make a more informed decision--Is the switch worth it if it pays for itself in 3 years?
I'm sorry, but nothing I've ever seen on Netcraft or anywhere supports your statement, in fact it directly contradicts it.
And, I would like an example of "integrate better with their internal MS databases and webservers"
Do you actually use any M$ based/proprietary connections/communications/protocols over the open Internet? Are you high? I'm sure *some* idiot companies are doing netbios rpc to *some* idiot web hoster, or MSSQL over the Internet, I mean I guess you're actually right, becuase all those Code Red/Nimda attacks that I get in my logs have to be coming from somewhere...
I apologize, you could be right... which would be scary to me if it meant anything more than a slightly annoying increase in traffic..
emerge codegreen...
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I think the general response would be that they seem stable because you don't have any *nix servers running next to them for comparison. Virus vulnerabilities and patching issues are still instability, just going by a different name. Planned downtime is still downtime.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Wasn't it a Windows lockup that took out Los Angeles air traffic control system last month? I think the procedure tells them to reboot once a month and they just forgot.
That would seem to me to be a stability issue.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these "uncommissioned" TCO reports separate OS users into software producers and software consumers. If you produce software you have a vested interest in sticking with MS - they change their OS every few years and that means their customers, and yours, will be back again and again. Let's face it, software is not a consumable - it doesn't wear out or get used up. There has to be something other than new faces driving sales or you're dead as a producer.
Software consumers don't like to keep buying new versions of software, and if they're home users they don't necessarily care about MS support, or lack thereof, for an obsolete OS. They're going to keep playing those games on Windows 98 as long as they work. Commercial users pretty much need to use supported software - if they can't go to someone when they have a problem it's useless to them. That's the primary allure of MS over open software. Though with Big Blue and others getting into the service end of open software there is a whole lot less reason for saying open software is not supported, particularly if you've got a service contract with a large outfit.
My company writes a lot of custom software for internal use, only. Expensive software. We need a supported OS. A lot of stuff we have that worked in NT doesn't work in XP, so it's been a major headache making the switch (we're still not half way there). As one of the better MS customers we are actually one of the reasons MS provided support for NT long after it was supposed to expire.
I don't know when the guys running this outfit are going to see, if they ever do, that sticking with MS means we are going to have to go through this over and over and over again. That's because every MS OS is obsolete and without MS support, right out of the box. It just hasn't happened for the newer ones, yet. That's something that's not given a lot of weight in these TCO analyses, and nobody tells you up front.
Or maybe that's not what he said.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Punctuation exists for a reason. It's clear from the *actual* text that he's referring to "a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux" when he says "such a change".
Twisting his words is one thing. Changing what he says completely is another.
""The use of FOSS by financial institutions does not pose risks that are fundamentally different from those presented by the use of proprietary or self-developed software.However, FOSS adoption and usage necessitates some distinctive risk management practices with which institutions must be familiar." Yep, that's exaclty what Ballmer is trying to convince you isn't so... so who do we trust on risk assessment, federal bank insurers or Microsoft? Heh."
/.tting crowd agrees that the days of useful computing coming out of Redmond are past. Given the number of people employed and the spending capability, i would expect Excel to make my coffe in the morning, let alone providing me with a decent financial calculus add-in.
Ballmer's strategy has some much more ominous undertones.
I think that most of the
The point is that there is a measure of "vicious circle" at work here. Think about this:
.the end users, the masses, have as of now no need for new apps, becausee what they basically do is word processing, data entry, and some rudimentary form of calculus(try asking around what the VLOOKUP() function does in excel);
.To protect the franchise, MS must "gobble" all possible new apps, see media player, browser, etc;
.once gobbled, this "features must be integrated INTO the operating system itself: you can't simply produce a standalone program, because most of those are cheap or free and work also on competing operating systems, some of which work better on the basic intel-compatible architecture;
.once you do that, trying to keep stability and backward - compatibility is a PITA, and you're using most of your brainpower keeping it all from going to the dogs.
.your developers know that they are doing a lousy job, and their effort adjusts accordingly;
.Rinse.lather.repeat.
Since MS know s that programming is not the way out of its predicament, it hires semicommercial people like Ballmer,and given the choice between a Sierra Hotel Chief technology officer and a super lobbyist, it prefers the second.
Apart from that, the 800 lb gorilla has developed an experience in legal matters that few firms have, and, lo and behold, that's what MS is now: a conglomerate that is
a)a closed end technology investment fund that consistently shuns money making as a goal;
b)a producer of wishy washy software that most people would be happy to get rid off;
c)the biggest and baddest lobby-media-litigation fund.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)