Novell Assents To "Windows Is Cheaper Than Linux" 351
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.
its a bank (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reasons I can think of are that
Re:depends on the SAs (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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
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:It's probably true.. who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Applied Freudian Physchology (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Many people can say the following... (Score:2, Insightful)
If I am capable of installing Linux on an existing computer that is longer capable of running Windows because it is so bulky, how can it be more expensive?
The answer is: Running Linux isn't more expensive. In fact, it is less expensive. This does not prevent people from making the flawed and misleading argument that on a corporate level it is more expensive because people need to be trained to use Linux, whereas they are already familiar with Windows.
This is a logical fallacy at best, and deliberate misdirection at worst. The fact is, there are a lot of people who are very skilled with Linux who can provide excellent support for a corporate infrasrtucture. In reality, people generally need to be trained with Windows as well. The honest truth is the cost is about the same on the support side, and less expensive when it comes to software and equipment.
Of course, that's just my 2
FREE Software (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm quite sure it would be a different story if they had used a non-parasitic distribution. Novell will NEVER save you money.
Slackware or FreeBSD, is another matter entirely.
(TFA is slashdotted, or incompatible with dial-up. I could not view it. I am assuming they are using non-free Linux distributions. Oh, no wait, there it is 5 minutes later... 6 minutes total for the page to download.)
Well now that I can see TFA, they do not say what distributions they are curretnly using, but I can pretty much guarantee that they are not using FOSS given the statement made that 'Windows cheaper than Linux'.
Stupidity is its own punishment.
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.
Computers have a higher TCO (Score:2, Insightful)
Honest Truth and Dirty Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
The claim is bullshit. (Score:1, Insightful)
Total Cost of Getting in Bed with MS (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
it's all the time spent... (Score:3, Insightful)
What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's probably true.. who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Completely wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. I don't like Suse's SLES or the company, based on their recent stupidity, but to suggest there's never a case where this expensive distro is to forget how bad Windows is for administration. If you have a hundred Suse boxes, that's gonna run you something like $35k a year. After spending that, you can (in some cases) get by with one $75k admin running the whole show. Now if they're doing a bunch of things, you will probably need another admin, but if it's a homogeneous group of machines doing something simple, it can definitely fall out that way.
A Windows admin will usually be a bit cheaper, but A) you still have to pay for server licenses, and B) There is NO WAY a single guy can run all those boxes. I'll defer to people who have been in this situation, but I suspect you'd need three guys to keep a hundred windows server farm from imploding.
You can stump for free distros (I very much believe that's the way to go) but a blanket statement like "Novell will NEVER save you money." is nutty and undermines your entire message.
Meanwhile parasitic? Hardly. These guys spend money on R&D. The money comes from corporations. Yes, they skim money from that process, but both Novell and RedHat add value which we all benefit from. Think of it this way: they get a cut as middlemen, and the service they provide is getting Ford and Chase and Shell Oil (and whoever else has more money than you or me) to PAY FOR LINUX DEVELOPMENT. That's doing well while doing good, and you should be all for it.
TCO calculations here are not because they pay for their distros, it's because they have no CLUE what they're doing. They didn't hire good Linux admins, so they lose. Probably they handed Linux boxes to Windows admins, and they automated almost nothing. TCO for Linux can be WAY lower than Windows, but if you run Linux like windows, and deal with it like windows, it won't be lower.
Bringing us to your last line "Stupidity is its own punishment." -- I agree. Both for HSBC and Novell, here. But as they blunder forward, they step on everything we've planted. We suffer too.
I think you just made his point... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that might be time consuming is deciding which patches you want to push or not, which would take just as long on linux. Once they're approved by you, they'll get there automagically.
Also, this way patches are downloaded just once from MS. Then you can have your WSUS sync/replicate (across sites or what not), and your boxes update from that (you obviously don't want 2000 boxes to hit windows update at once across an expensive T3 - what a waste of expensive bandwidth would that be). It's a pretty good system overall. WSUS 3 is in beta, and it's quite nice.
We can also push apps to workstations (using GPO and what not) in no time at all either. Set it up once, and just let it happen.
Linux is nice for many things, but it's not better in every single way for everything...
I'm sure there's ways or perhaps equivalents to Active Directory (OpenLDAP?), Exchange, WSUS/SMS and all that (and things like Samba for serving files), but I doubt it's easy to get it all up and working. It's deceivingly simple to get all this working under windows (especially with Small Business Server).
Re:Novell is doing the logical thing (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't doing what's best for their clients. They are doing what they percieve to be best for their shareholders. In this respect they are just a mirror image of Microsoft.
Novell doesn't really care about the product or the customer.
As a paying customer of SLES, this alliance for the purpose of slander does squat for me.
So having no choice is better? (Score:2, Insightful)
This whole debate is a joke, statistics will say anything you want them to say. If I wanted Windows cost more then linux I would just combine factors that are negatives for Windows such as virus issues, required third party apps, security fixes, hardware upgrades required for vista, etc. In the end I could come back with a statistic that shows Windows is the cause of Global Warming if I really wanted to. Remember, statistics mean nothing unless you check the agenda behind the research.
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.