Amazon: Linux Saved Us Millions

Ian_Bailey writes: "ZDNet news presents another chapter in the Windows vs. Linux debate. Amazon.com claims that by switching to Linux, they were able to "cut technology expenses by about 25 percent, from $71 million to $54 million."" Lots of little bits in there. Nothing really new, but it's still nice.

Linux was only part of the savings

[the_rev_matt]

Note that they state it was a combination of the move to linux and lowered telco/comm costs. A minor, but important, point.

Linux winning over Win2k on the money angle

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft must position the MSFT stock as a growth stock. This means revenue growth of 10% per year. As revenues grow and the market beomces saturated, this beomces increasingly difficult to do and requires more draconian licensing and steeper fees.

It was predicatable that sooner or later, without opening new and potentially large markets, Microsoft would have to gouge existing customers.

The only thing that can bring Win2k and other enterprise software costs back in check would be a huge influx of revenues from XBox, MSN, and .Net services, three of the key new revenue initiatives at Microsoft.

eBay . . . Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian GNU/Linux powers eBay's wireless application server [workspot.com] . . . just another example that companies really need Linux.

Ha!

Re:A classic example of speaking out of one's arse

[Carnage4Life]

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

It knows what I have installed, what is *needed*, and other things I may *want*.

1. WindowsUpdate is a GUI tool that needs MSIE. Tell me how I upgrade a whole network of machines without doing it by hand on each one if I use Windows Update? Answer: I can't.
   
   
2. WindowsUpdate doesn't carry IIS patches which makes it practically useless for the major security issue surrounding Windows. which is IIS.
   To successfully keep on top of IIS patches you have to use hfNetChk which is,
   
   WAIT FOR IT,
   
   a command line tool.
   

Intel have also saved money

[jdh28]

In an article [theregister.co.uk] in The Register [theregister.co.uk], Intel's director of IT talks about making savings by deploying Linux across their enterprise, although the amount (~$200K) doesn't sound particularly massive in the scheme of things.

He says the savings "have come from price/performance advantages, reduced software licensing and maintenance costs".

john

Re:10 years old?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux technology is older than that. Its core was state of the art in the 1970s.

NT; however, was based on the work of the pioneering Computer Scientist David Cutler. Cutler took his vision of OpenVMS and built the first 21st century operating system. Microsoft has continued to innovate from this core. NT is hardly an extension to DOS. If it makes you feel better, your certainly able to think that way.

Re:quote of the day.

[mjh]

With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."

Yeah, and it works great in debian:
echo deb http://security.debian.org/ potato/updates main contrib non-free >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Let's see: dependancy management, security updates. What exactly was it that Linux doesn't do?

Not quite what it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is somewhat misleading. While amazon did say that they cut their technology costs by 25% last quarter by switching to linux. They did not achieve this by replacing the desktop windows boxes, but rather by replacing their proprietary Unix servers.

Paul Thurrott (admittedly someone with a strong pro MS bent) has a well written article [wininformant.com]. Here is an excerpt:

There have been some high-profile Linux adoption stories lately, with companies such as Amazon and even Intel Corporation espousing the wonders of this open source solution. The one crucial fact these stories don't highlight however, is that the Linux adoptions are replacing proprietary and expensive versions of UNIX, not Windows. And as both Amazon and Intel are quick to point out, neither is even considering replacing its Windows boxes with Linux.

Re:quote of the day.

[JennyWL]

With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said.

Whereas with Microsoft, customers end up being in the system support business, managing software updates and security patches (after yet another vulnerability has been revealed by yet another widespread exploit) while hoping that someone else has made sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other. What was his point again?

They Replaced Solaris *NOT* Windows

[xp]

Does anybody actually read the articles. They did not replace Windows with Linux: they replaced their Solaris boxes with Linux.

Cmdr Taco's post announces this as "another chapter in the Windows vs. Linux debate", which betrays a bias against Microsoft and an inability to read articles past head-lines.

The real conclusion to draw from the story is that Sun will die very soon, because Linux offers the same thing for zero cost. This will in fact make it even easier for Microsoft to take over the world.

So in a sick ironically twisted plot turn Linux helps Microsoft by taking out its main rival Sun.

Asim

Yeah, well I hate Microsoft too, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

While this story was bound to bring out the Anti-MS bigots in droves, it is worth pointing out that the article is all about replacing Solaris with Linux. Which I am sure that even the most committed zealots will agree is whole different kettle of fish than replacing Windows with Linux.