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Novell Assents To "Windows Is Cheaper Than Linux"
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:04 AM
from the whose-side-you-on-anyway dept.
from the whose-side-you-on-anyway dept.
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.
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its a bank (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:its a bank (Score:4, Interesting)
Anywho, I find most all TCO calculations to be dubious and akin to damned lies.
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Re:its a bank (Score:5, Interesting)
Few outside HSBC are aware of the massive struggle that took place between HSBC and MS over the enterprise licensing agreement in 2005/2006. You need to realize that there is enterprise licensing and then there is Enterprise Licensing for a nearly 2 *trillion* dollar multinational. HSBC is that big.
When the previous agreement expired in 2005 (and in the months leading up to the expiry), Microsoft took a pretty hard line, issuing all sorts of memos about the "new licensing structure" which of course worked out to HUGE increases in enterprise agreements (and not just for HSBC, for the whole world - remember that?). HSBC also went in hard, even going so far is to make a global "announcement" that our new global standard for server architecture would be linux-based. I remember running complete bullsh*t "pilots" of applications which were obviously purely for the benefit of our local MS/VAR boys. Now there was never any real threat of a full-on conversion but just think about the impact of such a statement from one of the world's largest technology purchasers. Those of you involved in any sort of vendor renewal will be familiar with this sort of mexican standoff.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that as the final hand$hake took place between MS and GroupHQ, the following exchanage took place:
- MS guy: "Ohbytheway you really killed us with that whole switch-to-linux thing... Citigroup and GE renew in the next few years... would you mind issuing some sort of statement that downplays/refutes/minimizes your earlier linux announcements?"
- HSBC guy: "Sure, how about 'Upon further review, TCO for linux >>> TCO for MS'?"
- MS guy: "That'll do."
Oh and for those who think that HSBC is "just a bank" because it isn't quite so dominant in the US, you really have no idea.
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Re:its a bank (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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And not just any bank (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod AC up (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:And not just any bank (Score:5, Informative)
The history shows that the bank is anything but the basically the Chinese National Bank. It is currently listed in London IIRC
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Re:And not just any bank (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:its a bank (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, from TFA :
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.
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It's probably true.. who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's probably true.. who cares (Score:5, Informative)
what's your point again?
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Since Novell and Microsoft said this... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Since Microsoft AND Novell said this...
No conflict of interest here; move along, citizens.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The benefits of OSS is that its free and open, not that its cheap for some bank to use compared to windows. MS may be completely right. I'm certain depending on the environment and what "ownership"
Three degrees of the severity of lies: (Score:4, Funny)
Lies,
Damned Lies,
and TCO reports
-- Greywolf's Law of TCO
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Forgot something (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, I just came up with this, but it's not different than what the 'article' is saying, there are no details at all, it's all just hand-waving and no facts.
depends on the SAs (Score:3, Insightful)
Where I work, we have had many more problems with our linux web servers than with our windows servers. I chalk it up to the fact that the team that manages our servers has WinTel in their group's name. Windows and Linux administration are two different skill sets. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that they'd rebadge a few windows SAs as linux SAs, which in my estimation, is a mistake.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:depends on the SAs (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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
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RTFA, again (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Funny)
Your comments were well thoughtout, concise, and without hysteria or bias.
You must be new here!
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So... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reasons I can think of are that
you forgot: (Score:4, Interesting)
Those are two more valid possibilities.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
HSBC (Score:3, Funny)
Hongkong and Shanghai are no longer part of the UK. You need to update your map (I hear Google has good maps).
zzz (Score:5, Interesting)
in other environments, linux makes more sense than windows
the truth is bland and unexciting
linux zealots and microsoft ad execs may have more exciting things to say on the subject, but they're just deluded or lying
Applied Freudian Physchology (Score:5, Funny)
How the open source community views Novell is reminiscent of the madonna-whore complex.
1. We can only love a perfect(technically) and chaste(doesn't screw msft behind our backs) woman
2. However we want her to be sexy(successful) and do the nasty(make money).
In essence we can never be satisfied with a company's performance and also love them at the same time. We are doomed to hate Novell and yet we desperately want her.
Re:Applied Freudian Physchology (Score:5, Insightful)
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For SOME Windows is cheaper. For others not. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Old cost of 0wnership article (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if Novel fairily included the higher cost to make a Windows system as secure as a Linux is.
Now, please note that much of that security is based on "security by unpopularity". However, if Linux were to become more popular, then the costs to find trained people and to pay them to support Linux would drop, probably just as much as the security costs went up.
Re:Old cost of 0wnership article (Score:4, Funny)
The easiest way to disambiguate that spelling is spell it: "Total Cost of Pwnership"
(TCP might not be the best way to abbreviate it though)
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I have a few questions on the grounds of such... (Score:4, Interesting)
TCO of Linux being higher than Windows wouldn't completely surprise me given my own personal experience with the OS, though hearing other people's experiences, I would not bet on either outcome. It, in several of it's incarnations, has given me more grief than almost any other OS I've used/administrated (there's only one worse I can think of, sorry
That being said, I'd still like to know -
is this weighted per machine on comparison, or per desktop in one set, per server in another, or is it just overall -
- If it's the latter, than TCO will be best on whatever system is used least.
- If it's the per server/per desktop, then it's a good measure
- If it's per machine, whichever has the highest desktop:server would probably win, so it's again unfair/biased.
Also, as it's stated, there are multiple distros; with how differently things are done, I wouldn't except a low TCO for multiple distros. My experience stems from 4 major distributions, totalling maybe 10-12 versions, the administration of different distros seems to be quite high, making multi-distro administration also a challange. That right there tells me this is biased against Linux.
Finally, learning cost: Learning is a sunk cost, and not an over-time cost. Was this TCO over the first year, or was it over a longer time? Did it involve a time-related cost projection? This is relevant because most of the users would have come in knowing how things were done in Windows, but not Linux, some of the admins may have even come in that way. The initial training cost would have been comparatively high compared to the new employee training cost - another VERY important factor that most likely biased this report against Linux. Anyone know if they actually put up facts about this?
A lot of words said and conclusions made in TFA, but at the end of the day, I don't feel any more educated than before - they just gave no useful or novel (/new/ not book or corporation) data.
Partly true (Score:4, Interesting)
Does that mean money saved overall, no. What it does mean is that money that would have been spent on X (software licenses, etc), is now spend on other stuff (aging infrastructure, upgraded network, etc and lots of other things that would have otherwise stay or been delayed in upgrading). There will always be places to dump cash, and what most of these studies don't seem to incorporate into the "studies" is that dollar for dollar, the spending might be the same or more for FOSS, but the results might not be the same nor what the money was spend on.
TCO of Williams FW29 is more then a Vespa! (Score:3, Interesting)
No credibility, since msft paid novl over $100M (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I don't see how any reasonably well informed person can believe anything positive published about msft. Msft pays for good PR in every way imaginable.
TCO calculations (Score:3, Insightful)
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=07/03/14/13
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".
Banks, mucho money, mucho incompetence. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't put much faith in the ability of HSBC to manage anything IT related. I work for a company selling trading software to top tier banks, many of them based in the UK. Overall, their IT staff are useless. Their seems to be two type of bank IT staffer - the permanent staff hired straight out of college, with no real world experience and no chance of acquiring any because the second kind of staffer, the contractors, do as little as possible but ensure their own job security by keeping the permies as ill-informed as possible.
This may sound cynical, but it is all too true. As an example, we had an IT person from one bank try to apply an update to their system by first untarring it on Windows and FTP'ing each file in turn to the Unix box. In the process they managed to change the case of all the files. This was despite the release notes (complete with cut 'n' paste, step by step instructions) telling them to apply the patch by untarring it on the Unix box.
Another example is a client who has switched from HP-UX to Solaris and now to Linux within the space of a year. With that kind of regular platform jumping it's no wonder this clients Windows TCO is lower than the one for Unix.
how to reduce TCO the HSBC way .. (Score:3, Informative)
'To date, HSBC has realized an estimated U.S.$50 million to $75 million reduction in annual costs--expected to increase to $100 million [microsoft.com] by the time deployment of the new desktop standard is finished at the end of 2007
How can you save money by spending it on another system to help you manage a system that is supposed to be easily managed in the first place - Active Directory.
How does the Windows environment have a lower TCO than Linux. Do they have keep the Linux admins in a separate part of the building. Aren't they allowed to admin the Windows boxes. Do they cost more. Do the Linux updates take longer.
Look at the TCO (Score:3, Insightful)
How likely is it they are correct? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
TCO is Meaningless (Score:5, Informative)
There is a real accounting procedure used by corporate accounts that could provide a comparison and that is Return on Investment (ROI).
Cost of Linux or cost of applications (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other side of the coin is many data recovery applications where the TCO is much less on Linux.
A prime example I had a friend bring be a dead laptop.. Won't even boot into the BIOS. Please recover my documents..
In Windows it requires finding an adaptor so you can put in both hard drives in one laptop at the same time and configure the drive as a second drive, etc..
In my case I put the drive in my laptop, booted Ubuntu off the CD. Mounted the drive and copied the My_Documents folder to a network share. Zero extra cost, no configuration (auto found my network and got an address).
I needed to burn an ISO to make a Ubuntu CD. In Windows the aparant choice is to upgrade the limited function CD burning software bundled with the machine or search online for free software (possibly trojan), scan it for viruses (purchased subscription application) and then burn a CD. On a Ubuntu machine, simply right click on the ISO and chose burn to CD.
To be fair, on the flip side of the coin, I do some MIDI stuff and DMX512 lighting. There are tons of free applications for Windows and only limited support on Linux. So the TCO study to be unbiased would point out there are applications where both have their high points. That is why I have a Windows machine and a Ubuntu machine and Live CD's for laptop data recovery.
In the enterprise where I work, It's a Windows environment because of the platform the vendors write for for our customised applications and embedded control and for hardware support of the same. I don't see any easy migration path away from the entrenched environment any time soon.
At home and on the desktop and on some fileservers and network appliances, it's a mixed environment is the lowest TCO. My Router and my Fileserver and my Printservers are all Linux based.
Do they use Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
The costs to buy everything needed to actually make a Windows network, 'work' are exponential when factoring in all of the third party pieces that are ABSOLUTELY necessary to make an distributed network function well.
Second Impression (Score:5, Informative)
Which caused quite a few turned heads at the office. Took a little longer than I expected, but its good to know I wasn't far off base.
Here's a back of the envelope calculation from the electronics company I work at.
TCO:
New Windows Machine Hardware 650
OS 279
Software 5,000-10,000
HOURS of installing and patching clicking OK, Next, Finish, Reboot, rinse, Repeat. Oh and Don't forget drivers.
New Linux Machine Hardware 650
Debian OS 0
Software 0
20 Minute install, unattended apt-get Updates.
Software includes Electronics Layout, Office, FlowCharter, Development tools( IDE, Compilers, Programmer, UML, Documentation), Solid Modeling, Project Management, Image editing, I could go on all day.
In my office there is a Windows 2000 Server, A WinXP Pro Right beside a Debian Development machine and another as Lamp Server.
Administration of the two windows boxes (Not to mention the 15 others) justifies my position as MIS. Administration of the two Debian boxes can be done remotely once a year in minutes.
I'm no big city, fancy accountant but I can say unequivocally (can you?) that OUR TCO is lower on our windows boxes than our windows boxes.
This is in just my office. All machines in the company are now running OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Inkscape, GhostScript, PDF Printer. and any other needed GPL tool that is cross-platform.
This method of transitioning to opensource is very effective. At first I got a few complaints and lots of skepticism. But quickly the bottom line starts to reflect positively and the people who matter, stop the complaining. I never again have to clean up IE related cruft and viri. We now have money in the budget to purchase Hardware instead of throwing it down the Proprietary Software Hole. When my phome intercom beeps I know it is a windows box calling for help.
I now spend most of my time developing Embedded Linux software instead of patching and reinstalling Windows and apps and I couldn't be happier.
Today the chief engineer asked me, "Why can't you just change it so it ignores that error?"
My answer was "You'd think I could, I mean, It makes sense that since the error is inconsequential to the operation of the application I could just change a few lines of code and we'd be golden. If we were talking about my machine I could do exactly that, But its Windows so I cannot. It's not just hard, its illegal. Just Restart the app when it happens."
"But, That's like 4 times a day."
"Oh well you could just call MS and ask them to check in to it. I'm sure they would be interested in fixing it for a big customer like us with our 25 licenses. Snicker..."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A chair? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I certainly didn't expect that.
Novell is doing the logical thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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