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Linux total cost of ownership cheaper than Windows

A report sponsored by IBM claims that the total cost of Ownership (TCO) of Linux is considerably less than Windows. This is curiously at odds with similar studies, sponsored by Microsoft, which draw the opposite conclusion.

The report from the Robert Frances Group looked at the TCO for large application servers, comparing Linux, Windows and Solaris solutions. The research was based on interviews with IT executives from more than 20 medium and large companies with more than 250 employees

The report notes that 'commercial product vendors', such as Microsoft and Sun, have cut their prices in order to compete with the open source licence of Linux. It also notes that Linux is not entirely a free lunch and that if companies want to do serious business on the platform they need to treat it as they would a commercial productand buy the same support and management tools available from IBM, Novell, RedHat and others, that they would on any other platform. As a result, the cost of deploying Linux is actually climbing although the report concludes there is still a considerable cost benefit. for article

posted by can @ 9:10 AM