Australian TCO Study: Linux Wins Again

An anonymous reader writes "An updated Linux vs Windows TCO study has found that a 250-seat company can end up saving 36 percent if it were to equip its users with the open source operating system and applications that run on it."

Comments

What about a larger company

[Myolp]

It would be interresting to see the results of a similar study when applied to a company with a much larger number of employees. Would the results be similar in a world-wide company with 10.000 employees located in different countries?

TFA looks quite unbiased...

[Gopal.V]

So far all the TCO studies I've seen are quite biased by the looks of it - except this one about TC0.

But you underestimate the staffing issues there. Firing all your MSFT IT guys and hiring new "LinuxCompatible" admins is a big pain for most companies. Of course you fire 3 Win32 admins and hire one Linux admin by default :)

For a new startup, a Linux desktop is invaluable , especially if you have a couple of in-house developers who use it regularly. That's where linux is slowly creeping into the desktop - not in the big companies with million dollar CTOs and kickbacks from Microsoft.

Biased in MS Favour

[Karora]

It is very interesting the assumptions that they state have been made to bias this report in Microsoft's favour.

• He said given the fact that the company deals in open source products, four aspects had been factored in to tip the scales towards Microsoft: The model was not modified to to reflect research by the Robert Frances Group which showed that Linux needed 82 percent fewer staff resources.

• The costs of malware - viruses, spyware, worms, keyloggers, adware - were not taken into account. Zymaris said every research point found had suggested that this cost was essentially and predominantly a Windows platform cost, resulting in billions lost by business every year.
• Costs which arose when systems need to be pre-emptively rebooted or crashed, resulting in unscheduled downtime, were not taken into account. "All our research indicates that Linux rarely if ever suffers such problems and open source platforms on the whole are extremely robust," Zymaris said.
• "Finally, because Microsoft has claimed that introducing Linux into an environment will lead to increased reliance on external consultants, we have tripled the amount budgeted for such requirements on the Linux models," he said.

Wow!

Re:Crap

[Plug]

No, the outcome and confidence is great. It says "Even if we did everything we possibly could to sway things in the Windows direction, and ignored a bunch of Windows' costs, Linux is still cheaper".

Still cheaper. You can't necessarily put numbers on the price of spyware and reboots, but whatever that number is, Linux is cheaper than it already. It is not a case of "Linux is free if your time has no value" - it's that "even if you value your time at 3 times the price that you would on Windows, you are still better off".

Re:uh

[TangoCharlie]

Sounds like you need to be using Firefox, a free open source web browser... suitablly equipped with the Adblock extension. Then you wouldn't keep seeing the Microsoft adverts :-)

Not having to read the Microsoft adverts will therefore increase your productivity. Proof that Open Source software improves TCO!

Why not compare to Mac OS???

[parvenu74]

Am I the only one wondering when we're going to see a TCO study involving the use of Mac OS? Surely there has to be some cost savings in reduced downtime and administration with using a Mac...

Re:Screw TCO

[bhima]

This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start....

We're talking about big multinational companies, so a lot of your evangelical strategies won't work, are inappropriate, aren't welcome and would get you fired. For example:

In Step One: I work in R&D and my Boss (in fact the whole food chain from me up) is a Ph.D. Physical Chemist, and despite the fact and he's got the message (he uses firefox at home, for example) he has no control (or interest) over what IT does and thus I would be preaching to choir. All of the desktops in the company are standardized (choice of 4 types) and locked down, no one has write privileges to the local drives or local admin rights. Running an application that is not approved is a fireable offense, So is modifying the registry, Running a P2P app, Running a server, and Bypassing security. Setting up and running a wireless network will result in the IT guys immediately, on discovery (random 802.11x sweeps), escort you out of the building. Need something different or package installed? It's no problem, but you can't do it, IT does it remotely.

In Step Two: Are you kidding me? They are not my servers to do anything with! I can not even enter the room they are in! They'd escort you out of the building.

Step Three... Back to the PHB thing, the head of IT does not live or work in the same country I do, he's never even been on site, there is no way I could drop anything on his desk and if I did, it would be extremely unwelcome because not only am I not in his field, he's never met me. BSA is meaningless to us, we have site licenses for Microsoft's, Adobe's, & PTC's entire portfolio (along with a pile of other's, it's a 48 page catalog) and we're big enough to say, piss off you can't come in and inspect (trade secrets, you know).

Step Four is the only thing you've said that makes sense or even vaguely doable, but it lacks a keyword: "Validated" and because of that would not considered.

So what does that leave me with? Only things in MY domain: Data Collection, Device Control, Device Firmware and Molecular modeling. Here I've done a fair job. I use SuSE linux on most of the data collection and machine control boxes. I use SuSE, Free-DOS and Win-XP to develop on. If you look under the skirts of a lot of our devices you find that only the older ones have custom kernels, while the newer ones run NetBSD or Linux.

I hope I haven't offended you or been overly negative, but a lot of OSS evangelists do NOT understand big companies. That's a large part of why we're still using Microsoft products.

Don't get me wrong, I want to believe!