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Seismic shocks devastated IT staff and industry watchers last week when an IBM sponsored study delivered a thunderous conclusion: the total cost of Linux ownership (TCO) was less than the TCO for Windows or Solaris. The survey, based on interviews with IT executives from more than 20 medium and large companies with more than 250 employees, discovered that over a three year period, Linux is 40 per cent less expensive than a comparable x86-based Windows solution and 54 per cent less than a comparable SPARC-based Solaris solution. Industry pundits were surprised that the report contradicts Microsoft sponsored research claiming the exact opposite. Could there be vested interest at work? In recent years Microsoft has commissioned, or publicised, a stream of reports attacking the TCO of Linux servers and time and again the studies have shown, "Ongoing Management Costs of Linux Offset Any Upfront Savings," or "Windows Server Delivers Lower TCO than Linux in China." Really, what is the point? What do purchasing managers and technical consultants gain from such studies? Everybody knows the broad results before hand, only the percentage difference is likely to make an interesting spread bet. And what does it matter anyway? Since when was cost the only important feature in buying anything? If cost was all, then goodbye luxury cars, goodbye leather shoes, and goodbye Marks and Spencer food retailing. Purchases are not made on cost alone, they are made on many factors. A study of simple costs between organic and non-organic vegetables would yield no useful results whatsoever: "Organic Veg more expensive says report," would be the headline, but only a feature vs. cost debate can possibly allow you to decide between unpolluted or chemically enhanced root veg.. For operating systems, it is the level of support, the applications available, the licence, drivers, user base, custom code, and so on. The list is endless and is different for every single enterprise. The Microsoft attack on the TCO of Linux looks rather silly in this respect, and now IBM has joined the circus. At least the somewhat dull one-upmanship over TCO signals there is enough competition for the players to enter the court with their opponents. That can only be a good thing. If Microsoft was soundly winning the open source debate you can bet it wouldn't bother writing reports on how cost effective its software was. Bill Gates would rather you didn't know that owning Microsoft products really costs many times the ticket price. The competition helps everybody, even if it causes confusion. IBM's report, no scrap that; the Robert Francis Group's report – independent but sponsored by IBM – admits the gap is narrowing as Microsoft and Sun offer competitive licensing arrangements to take the sting from the open source tail. "Commercial product vendors have introduced lower-priced offerings in an attempt to compete with Linux," it says. But it still befuddles that these reports are produced at all. Is producing a report supporting the company line such a tiny addition to the public relations (PR) budget that a corporation might as well create it? Maybe thinking about not doing such a report involves more management intervention and cost than simply letting the PR company get on with it. IBM's report proclaims its independence in the form of a disclaimer: "The work involved in performing this study was commissioned by IBM Corp. However, the views expressed herein are those of Robert Frances Group, and do not necessarily reflect or represent those of IBM." Yeah right, and how many sponsored reports are issued each year that do not reflect the views of the sponsor? And how many analyst firms are re-employed when they don't? William Knight Sep 14, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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