Any comments on this? It was recently circulated via the e-gov-india India-egov@yahoogroups.com mailing list. FN

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Message: 4 Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 11:47:30 +0530 From: "Nandkumar Saravade" nsara31@hotmail.com Subject: Article on Total Cost of Ownership of Linux vis-a-vis Microsoft

Hi all

Quoted below is an interesting article on a study done on TCO of Linux v. Microsoft. The original article is available at http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22012.html.

Nandkumar Saravade

Windows vs. Linux: TCO Feud Rages On By James Maguire NewsFactor Network August 1, 2003

"If you've got somebody who's smart and can config it, then [Linux is] a beautiful desktop and runs well," says Meta Group analyst Thomas Murphy. "But for the average business owner, [it] does not have that kind of simple nature that you have in Windows."

If you fear the end is near for the entertaining debate over whether the Windows or Linux desktop is ultimately less expensive, you can relax. There are enough variables to keep the feud raging for the foreseeable future.

The OSes themselves are vastly different, in terms of how they come to market, how they are developed, and the number of applications written for them. And their environments are also many and varied -- from large enterprises with operations carried on by armies of clerical workers to small companies with sophisticated data analyses performed by highly specialized staff.

Reconciling all of these elements to identify either operating system as the one that offers lower TCO for all situations is impossible. Linux offers a lower TCO in some situations -- a lot lower, according to Aberdeen Group analyst Bill Claybrook. Yet, in other scenarios, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is a more cost-effective option, he noted.

The final answer "depends on what you want to do with it," Claybrook told NewsFactor.

What Do You Use?

Deciding which OS is the most cost-effective depends largely on what applications a company needs, Claybrook explained. If a business's software is limited to applications that are similar to Word, Excel or Powerpoint, "they can probably get by with Linux," he said. But if a business requires a more advanced range of programs, it will need Windows.

"The more applications you have, the harder it's going to be -- the more expensive it's going to be -- " to switch to Linux, Gartner analyst Michael Silver told NewsFactor. "We're talking about something that can be very complex."

Who Are Your Employees?

For a study that compares the Windows and Linux desktops, Silver divided employees into two groups: "structured task users," who do clerical-style work on a repetitive basis, and "knowledge workers," who analyze data conceptually. Knowledge workers use more -- and more complex -- applications, making it more expensive for them to use Linux.

The Gartner study shows TCO profiles based on a hardware life of three years. For a structured worker using Linux, the figure is US$5,305. This figure falls to $4,402 for "locked" Linux -- that is, the worker does not have root access. For structured workers using WinXP, the study calculates the cost at $5,148.

For knowledge workers, Linux TCO is $6,101, and locked Linux is $5,062. For WinXP, this figure is $5,908.

However, these costs do not include the cost of application development -- a business may need specific programs written for it. The study notes that these costs vary so widely from business to business that it is difficult to create an accurate theoretical model -- but it outlines a possible range. For structured workers, costs would vary from $1,151 to $3,454 per worker; knowledge worker migration would cost between $4,087 and $9,044.

The Cost Of Complexity

In business, complexity often equals cost, and Linux is a more complex OS to configure on the desktop, Meta Group analyst Thomas Murphy told NewsFactor. "If you've got somebody who's smart and can config it, then it's a beautiful desktop and runs well. But for the average business owner, [Linux] does not have that kind of simple nature that you have in Windows."

Yet Linux set-up and service should not be seen as a major problem for companies considering the OS, Claybrook said. Although there are only a limited handful of Linux desktop vendors, "the people selling it are certainly going to service it."

Future TCO

The cost of ownership of a desktop system is, of course, not fixed: As market forces play out over time, prices can change dramatically. This may affect Linux much more than Windows, because the open-source OS has multiple vendors.

Enterprises are economically motivated to switch to Linux for reasons other than the OS itself, however. "It's because they have a choice of more than one vendor," Claybrook noted, "and that competition makes it attractive to buyers."

Even though there are costs associated with migration, Forrester analyst Stacey Quandt told NewsFactor, "more companies and government organizations are viewing the Linux desktop as a means to reduce IT spending and free themselves from the control of a single software vendor -- Microsoft."

Although there is interest among enterprises in choosing Linux, "it's going to be interesting to see how much of that is turned into real action," Silver noted. Even the 2 percent figure used to describe the number of desktop users running Linux is "too high for the enterprise," he said.

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