The Linux vs. Windows war continues as two different studies come up with facts that are diametrically opposed to each other. Now, which one is devoid of bias, and spells plain facts, is a choice you have to make. Microsoft touted a study it commissioned from independent analyst Mercer Management Consulting, which made the case that companies that implement migration programs away from UNIX systems based on the need to adopt new applications now tend to choose Windows over Linux. On the other hand, IBM continues to cite an August 2005 study it commissioned from independent analyst Robert Frances Group, stating overall costs of Linux ownership tends to cost businesses 40% less than Windows over a three-year period.
Balance Tipping Towards Windows
Microsoft’s paper claims that businesses that choose Linux over Windows for their UNIX migrations tend to be less rigorous in how they ascertain potential TCO savings. "Many IT executives at companies that migrated from Unix to Linux admitted, when interviewed for this study," the paper states, "that the decisions to move from Unix to Linux (rather than Windows) often are based on intuitive expectations of savings and preconceived notions about the ease of migrating specific workloads to Linux."
The paper quotes one IT manager representing the minority viewpoint as saying, "You don't have to do an ROI analysis to understand it makes sense to switch to a platform [Linux] that is a factor of 3 or 4 cheaper." Microsoft commissioned Mercer to perform the study.
Mercer consultant John Wenstrup, said, the cost of the operating system license is not the driving factor in TCO today. "When some companies are considering migration," said Wenstrup, "they assume that the costs of the hardware and software platforms are the overriding cost elements. In fact, what we found is that most of the cost of migration around 80-85 percent is composed of the labour of executing the migration and the ongoing labour associated with managing the environment. The total cost of the entire hardware and software platform including maintenance costs tends to only be 15 to 20 percent of total migration costs."
The cost of the software platform itself, Wenstrup contends, is only about 2% of total TCO, or as much as 5% when ongoing software maintenance costs are factored in.
Balance Tipping Towards Linux
On the other hand, IBM-sponsored study by Robert Frances Group states that over the past few years, Linux adoption rates in the enterprise have soared. Users have quoted a wide range of TCO and ROI benefits, and Linux has become a strategic platform for business applications at many companies. It has also come under attack by opponents, who have cast doubt on the cost savings realised by deploying Linux. In an effort to provide accurate TCO data to enterprise IT executives, RFG performed a quantitative analysis to highlight current operating system experiences in the enterprise.
RFG contacted key buyers and IT decision makers across a range of industries, evaluated their level of satisfaction with each operating system, and performed a TCO analysis incorporating their cost data. Because it would be difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate every possible application stack in a single study, RFG examined an application infrastructure layer common to most enterprises like application servers.
The application server is a critical infrastructure component for many companies, and thus represents an ideal target for operating system selection. Because the specific workload profile will have a dramatic impact on the variance in TCO, RFG recommends doing any work analysis this way. IT users should treat with skepticism any studies that do not make such workload distinctions.
RFG has performed several TCO studies in the last three years, and thus has a view into how costs have shifted as Linux adoption rates have increased. As Linux has matured, the TCO gap between Linux and Microsoft Windows has narrowed for two reasons. First, commercial product vendors have introduced lower-priced offerings in an attempt to compete with Linux.
Second, Linux buyers now treat the platform as they would a commercial product, purchasing the same support offerings, management tools, and other facilities that they would on any other platform. Major vendors now offer a broad array of Linux support options, and most customers make use of these offerings. There is still a significant spread between Linux and the other operating system choices. Over a three year time frame the overall TCO for an application server in each environment is shown below:
Linux is 40 percent less expensive than a comparable x86-based Windows solution and 54 percent less than a comparable SPARC-based Solaris solution, based on a three-year period of ownership for a system supporting 100,000 operations per second on the SPECjbb benchmark.
In addition, the focus on Linux has largely shifted from raw cost factors to a range of financial and other benefits, such as administrator skill portability, hardware architecture portability, and vendor diversity. These benefits increase the IT department's ability to quickly and cost effectively meet future workload demands and business challenges.
Beyond TCO reductions, study participants quoted a range of financial and strategic benefits realised by deploying Linux, including its flexible licensing model, wide range of supported hardware platforms, the choice of support providers, and fast administrator skill set transfer from other Unix platforms. Buyers still appreciate the potential TCO reductions Linux can yield, and this remains an important selection criterion. However, IT decision makers are continually challenged to make their IT infrastructures more flexible and agile. RFG found most participants eager to capitalise on the long-term strategic benefits Linux provides to their organisations.
Thus the key question to address is whether enterprises spend equally on Linux and Windows.
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