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.' "

Comments

Unobjectionable but meaningless

[Mostly a lurker]

I am one of those the author referred to who does not rate Laura DiDio's writing highly. Her latest article has no material I really take objection to. Actually, the latest article has no material. What does she say: a Yankee study revealed that no good data on the relative TCO of Windows and Linux servers was available; the TCO will vary from organisation to organisation; without knowing the TCO, it is hard to make an informed decision.

Has anyone succeeded in resolving their problem of which OS to use based on this insightful article?