Studies related to Microsoft

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There have been a number of studies related to Microsoft. They are always a source of great controversies, since the studies are often funded by people or companies having a stake in one of the sides, and there are a lot of advocates on both sides.

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[edit] IDC study: Linux TCO vs Windows 2000 TCO

In October 2002, Microsoft commissioned IDC to determine the total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise applications on Windows 2000 versus the TCO of Linux on the same enterprise applications. IDC looked at security and other infrastructure tasks, and Web Serving. According to the report, Windows 2000 had a lower TCO for four infrastructure items and Linux had a lower TCO for web serving. IDC's report was based on telephone interviews of IT executives and managers of 104 North American companies in which they determined what they were using for a specific workload for file, print, security and networking services.

IDC determined that the four areas where Windows 2000 had a better TCO than Linux — over a period of five years for an average organisation of 100 employees — were in the use of file, print, network infrastructure and security infrastructure. They determined, however, that Linux had a better TCO than Windows 2000 when it came to web serving. The report also found that the greatest cost was not in the procurement of software and hardware, but in staffing costs and downtime. The report did not take into consideration the impact of downtime to the profitability of the business (although they did apply a 40% productivity factor, in order to recognise that employees are not entirely unproductive during periods of IT infrastructure downtime) though it did find that Linux servers had less unplanned downtime than Windows 2000 Servers. They found that most Linux servers ran less workload per server than Windows 2000 servers and also found that none of the businesses they interviewed used 4-way SMP Linux computers. IDC also did not take into account specific application servers — servers that need low maintenance and are provided by a specific vendor — when they performed their study. The report did emphasise that TCO was only one factor in considering whether to use a particular IT platform, and also noted that as management and server software improved and became better packaged the overall picture that was being shown in their report could change [1].

[edit] Criticism

This study was one of the most criticised studies, since Microsoft funded it. Many editorials were written about the study, including one by The Register [2].

[edit] Cybersource TCO study: Linux versus Windows

Melbourne-based Cybersource compared in 2004 the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of running Linux versus Windows in the enterprise. Its studies found that Linux was 36% cheaper than Windows, when taking into account the software cost as well as service, support and upgrades. The study done in 2004 was an update on their previous studies in 2002, and found the same results.

[edit] Get the Facts

Get the Facts is a campaign-initiative launched by Microsoft in 2004 in order to, in the website's own words, "Get The Facts on Windows Server System and Linux" [3]. It is primarily a campaign to compare the TCO of Linux to Windows. In 2004, Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the UK warned Microsoft that the ad campaign for the initiative, which claimed that the resultant price of Linux was no less than that of Windows, could be misleading. The Linux computer in the comparison was a IBM z900 mainframe compared to Windows Server 2003 running on two 900MHz Xeon CPUs.[4]

[edit] See also

[edit] Other studies

There are other studies which focuses on an aspect of the systems, for example, security. Immunity, Inc. published a report named Microsoft Windows: A lower Total Cost of 0wnership" discussing the "Total cost of 0wnership" [sic, see 0wn], focusing the security and the effort needed to hack into these systems.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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