Novell Assents To "Windows Is Cheaper Than Linux"

dyous87 points out a ZDNet article reporting that Novell has endorsed a customer's comment claiming that the total cost of ownership of Linux is higher then that of Windows. Novell and Microsoft jointly issued a press release quoting an IT guy for a UK-based bank, HSBC: "Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment." The context of the comment makes it clear that HSBC's Linux environment has a mix of distros, and that a move to centralize around one distro — Novell's — will save money. Nevertheless, Novell's connection to this assertion is not likely to improve their reputation in the open source community.

Comments

its a bank

[mastershake_phd]

This is coming from a bank. They probably spent ridiculous amounts of money verifying linux is secure. They probably take microsofts word for it.

Re:its a bank

[Phisbut]

This is coming from a bank. They probably spent ridiculous amounts of money verifying linux is secure. They probably take microsofts word for it.

Also, from TFA :

"Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment."
HSBC claims it will achieve cost savings by reducing the number of Linux distributions it uses

So basically, they're saying it costs more to manage several different distributions of Linux than a single "distribution" of Windows... Well d'uhh. How about migrating all their Linux boxes to one distro, and then telling us it's harder to manage.

Re:its a bank

[fourchannel]

No,figures don't lie. But figures without a context are useless.

For example, I saw this commercial that said "Over 60% of Americans are now in debt". Which is a true statement. But when he used the word 'now' it makes sound like an urgent problem. like saying, "It's now Thursday."

But 60% of Americans in debt?? Oh wait, they were counting people who had a mortgage on a house, which most people don't think of as debt, but simply making payments on the loan.

Twisted out of context to hell and back? You betcha! Besides, everyone knows it's cheaper to run windows than linux. With windows, you sell your soul to microsoft as a down payment, thereby lowering the overall cost of enslavement...um...I mean ownership.

It's probably true.. who cares

[xtal]

If all you want is a machine to look at spreadsheets on, there's nothing wrong with windows. Hell, for a lot of people it's fine - if you're behind a firewall, who cares? The computer is just a tool to get the job done.

When you're looking at managing systems en masse, it's different, and it gets really different with servers - that's where microsoft's liscencing comes back to hurt them.

I'm torn

[DoofusOfDeath]

On the one hand, we OSS advocates can't afford to live in a dream world. If Windows is cheaper than Linux, we need to know about it, know why, and fix it. So from that angle I'm glad MicroNovell assented to it.

But we also know that statements like this are typically used out of context, especially by the professional liars who do advertisting for a living. Somehow, when MS runs ads talking about TCO, they'll forget to mention all of the qualifications that accompany this case study, such as the fact that it had a mixed Linux environment. So from this angle, I almost wish that MicroNovell hadn't assented at all, since it's likely to be used to mislead the general public rather than make them wiser.

So...

[kripkenstein]

If HSBC thinks that Linux has a higher TCO than Windows, then why do they even have Linux machines?

The only reasons I can think of are that

• They have Linux-only apps that they can't run on Windows. (Is that likely? Perhaps someone here can shed some light on that matter.)
• Linux has a higher TCO, but is worth it.
• Linux had a higher TCO when using multiple distros, but after consolidating to Novell SUSE, they expect Linux's TCO to be below Windows'. TFA does focus on their moving to a single Linux distro to cut costs, but doesn't mention whether after that cut Linux will have a competitive TCO vs. Windows or not.

For SOME Windows is cheaper. For others not.

[sjbe]

It's not hard to find specific cases where Windows is cheaper. The problem is when people use specific instances of cheaper TCO using linux or Windows to generalize which one is cheaper for other cases. It is easy to find specific cases where linux is the better option and others where Windows makes more sense. Finding examples however does not answer the question of which is more cost effective in general. I'm not sure there is a good way to answer that other than to assume that companies are rational enterprises and that they will gravitate over time towards to most cost effective solution. Installed base size might be the best available (albeit highly imperfect) measure if you accept the above premise. If linux is growing in market share, that might be rationally construed as evidence that companies are finding the TCO of linux to be lower. It's not the only factor of course but I think it is a reasonable inference.

For the desktop machines in my company which was cheaper depended entirely upon how we used the machines. We ran our servers on SuSE linux but for the desktop machines we needed specific applications where the linux alternatives were sufficiently inferior as to make them not cost effective. For our server needs there was no comparison, linux was vastly more cost effective. TCO is specific to the needs of the organization and/or individuals using the product. Its going to differ on a case by case basis and we would be foolish to generalize our needs to that of the IT community at large.

Re:depends on the SAs

[Goeland86]

Exactly. Any decent linux SA will also have a higher pay as well, because it's not as common a skill as windows SA. Again, stereotyping here, but windows SAs hate the command line in general and keep their skills at "point and tick the right box, restart".
If you count the cost of your SA's pay, then yes, I would expect the TCO of linux to be a tad higher, if you omit the cost of windows licenses on the other side. Linux/*nix SAs in general know more of the underlying OS than their windows counterparts do, it's just a fact because of how the system works. Where windows provides GUIs for all aspects of configuration, *nix provides .conf files that you can edit by hand and get exactly the configuration you want in just the same amount of time, and with Linux, you don't need to reboot, just restart the service. More efficient and faster! Not user-friendly for a granny's desktop, but for a SA, whose very job it is to make sure everything's configured right, it is.
I haven't seen Vista, but XP and the little bit I've seen of Server 2003 all seemed very GUI based to me. There was an article about Windows finally receiving a decent command-line utility. Is Vista Pro going to get it so that SAs can actually do linux-style administration? Or is everything still going to be a mix of .ini files and registry keys to be activated using a GUI?

Re:Applied Freudian Physchology

[nuzak]

It has little to do with faithfulness or whatever other tortured metaphors may apply with respect to the open source community. To me, it has nothing to do with open source: I've lost faith in Novell because their "partner" has them talking down their own product. That's all I gotta say about that.

TCO calculations

[Down_in_the_Park]

Great, now we know that the TCO for a mixed Linux environment is higher than for Windows. And what does it mean?

Did they calculated the costs by taking the productivity of their personal into account, the increased security risks and possible costs for disaster recovery ( like an employee responsible for account creation, who had a keylogger installed, yesterday news http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/14/133 0215)?

What does it really mean, if you don't get the details of the entire installation and their calculation? Training people on new software is certainly the biggest costs, training people on a closed source system just means that security is controlled somewhere else and that users will not understand, can not understand and will make errors, which put your business at risk.

Sure, Linux can be attacked as well, but once there is a critical bug known, you can react by getting a patch, disable that part or write your patch yourself (not that I could do it, but a programmer employed by a bank...)

Much better than a "patch/nopatch tuesday".

How likely is it they are correct?

[whorapedia.com]

Let me quote two Gartner studies:

IT services for open-source software represent 1.2% or $2.3 billion of the addressable 2006 North American IT services market. - Report Highlight for Dataquest Insight: Open-Source Software IT Services, North America, 2005-2010

Across all organizations, one-fifth say they use OSS. As few as 17 percent of midsize and large respondent organizations say they use OSS, and 28 percent of organizations of 500 to 2,499 employees claim they use OSS. - User Survey Report: Open-Source and Linux Software Support Services, North America, 2006

OSS services account for 1.2% of the IT budget, yet 20% of larger companies use OSS? So worst case, if less than 6% of the average company's software is OSS, then MS/NV are correct. If greater than 6% is OSS, then they are obviously wrong - due to OSS's relatively small market share.

Novell is doing the logical thing

[SerpentMage]

Ever look at a piece of modern art and think, "my kid could do that in five minutes?" Ever think why theater is too out in left field for you? Well there is a strong connection between modern art and Open Source.

Open source works and is great, but lets face the facts people in the open source community are not willing to pay money for software, or even software support. They expect it for free. Look at the bottom line of Redhat vs any closed source company. Their bottom lines are massively different.

So Novell, like the modern art community is saying and doing the things that PAYING CUSTOMERS or PAYING PATRONS expect. Modern art is not for the benefit of the general community because the general community does not buy art. Hence artists when they hear, "oh my kid can do this in five minutes" will laugh in your face because you critique as a non-paying person is completely irrelevant. Your opinion does not matter in the least. Likewise I think with Novell and Open Source growing apart, I think Novell is saying, "hey you folks are not paying the bills thus we are going to do what is best for our clients."

I can't blame them...