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A New Look at Linux vs. Windows TCO
An anonymous reader writes "Laura DiDio, research fellow at the Yankee Group, published a column this morning in which she discusses key findings from a new survey on the total cost of ownership of Windows vs. Linux. DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft, but she offers excellent, neutral advice for any IT department considering a fundamental systems switch: 'If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business. Chances are, if you cannot answer most or all of those questions, it does not matter what operating system you have because ignorance of the core TCO tenets means that your business is not getting the most out of its networks.' "
I beleive the terms she uses to describe linux users and contributors are "hippie communists".
I am very surprised to learn from Ms. DilDO that RedHat, Novell and IBM are bastions of pot smoking longhaired beatniks....
Why is this even posted on slashdot? Did we miss a post? "Slashdot bought out by Microsoft in a historical deal totalling XXXXbillion$"
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Has anyone succeeded in resolving their problem of which OS to use based on this insightful article?
That doesn't sound neutral to me, it sounds more like:
"We know that you, and everyone else on the planet, can see that Linux is cheaper so I'll try to convince you that you don't know enough to judge the TCO in the hope that you'll then take the easy option of sticking with M$"
Was there a specific point to that article? It seems she tried to avoid any nitty-gritty details after her attempt at building a point that Windows isn't threatened by Linux, and vice versa. After that opening I expected something with more depth.
Instead, she threw in mindless details of the very obvious and took on a condescending tone toward businesses in general; of course, she did toss in random facts and figures that stuck with the general theme. To be honest, it looks more like a rant with ramblings than a neutral article with a point in mind.
Fun Zoid RPG
When I switched to Linux on my desktop, I was forced to learn quite a bit more then I knew about my OS. Someone who switches to Linux because their frind told them it was better is in for a similar experience, and could end up saving his company untold fortunes by getting educated about his/her OS.
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
Unix {including Linux} only ever stops working for a Good Reason; so Unix sysadmins actually have to do hard work reading and deciphering error messages and fixing stuff {and Linux admins in particular must add googling for other people's related misfortunes and extrapolating}.
You can always spot the Linux n00bs because they are the ones who reboot a misbehaving box, see exactly the same error messages as before, and think there is something unusual about that.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
A friend of mine hired a linux guy to handle machines for several sites. About 100% of his time spent doing any kind of technical work (maintenance or repair) is spent on repairing the MS-Windows machines, which another group is actually contracted to maintain and repair. However, if he doesn't do it, then it doesn't get done. The linux machines, fortunately outnumber the MS-Windows machines significantly at those sites and he only has to touch them when he wants to try a new distro. He's always got one machine for 'experiments' at each site, to get feedback from customers on new programs, distros, or configurations.
Fortunately for my friend this fellow doesn't mind too much and has nerves of steel, a necessity since he rose up from a MS-Windows background.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"For example: we have 3 servers (all Windows) in my company. Do we use them optimally? Probably, since we cannot replace them with any other software (to my great sorrow). Do we know how much each server costs us? No, and we will never be able to calculate that. Niether we care, as long as they do their job."
To be honest, I don't think you're in a position to really judge. 3 Windows servers (you don't mention how many of other OSes) implies a relatively small company.
Try working at a company with revenues in the billions. When I make a decision, it literally affects thousands of people and downtime has the potential to cost millions.
We've been relatively lucky with our Windows servers -- they've stayed up. But to be frank, the Windows guys are a hell of a lot cheaper than the UNIX guys. We have one aging Sun box, for example. You'd think it'd be cheap to maintain, but the guys who runs it gets an annual salary as much as twice the Windows guys. When that box goes down (and it does -- hard sometimes), it costs more to bring it back up thanks to that guy's salary.
You say things are "hardly measurable". They are certainly measurable. If your file server(s) went down tomorrow, how much client work would be lost by not being done? Think about the wasted salaries of everyone using your box. Joe in accounting makes X hundred thousand, Mary makes Y hundred thousand, etc. If you're just looking at licensing costs of the OS, you're missing a much bigger picture.
Say it with me: it's IT's JOB to calculate the worth of their department, same as any other. If we don't do it, no one else will.
I think it was summed up best by Noel on Linux Today:
"[Laura DiDio] has no clue about writing code. Not a single bit at all... For goodness sake this person has only a B.A. in communication degree. She writes magazine articles not code..."
That one line sums up Laura DiDio perfectly, she doesnt have any qualifications in IT, she should go do what she has the training and abilities to do... Write reports on supernatural occurances and alien abductions for supermarket tabloids...
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
Many organizations only use their networks for mail, file, and print services. If they are working to everyone's satisfaction and are within the accepted budget then performing countless metrics can just be a waste of time.
Why should you make major changes if all is working well and within budget?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Yeah, it works great if you can afford a WINS server, but as everyone who's ever had a LAN party knows, it sometimes magically fails on small networks.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?