Lee Einer wrote:
>
> That link doesn't seem to work. Was this about the
> MicroSoft-commissioned study that found Microsoft was cheaper than Linux
> for some development tasks?
>
> R Melder at SPiN Internet Media wrote:
>
> >http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=74&u=/cmp/20030910/tc_cmp/1470033
> >5&printer=1
> >
> >Thought this might be entertaining.
> >
> >; )
> >
> > ..:: Randy Melder ::..
> > 602-279-0135 - www.spininternetmedia.com
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------
> >PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> >To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings:
> >http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> >
>
> --
>
> Lee Einer
> Dos Manos Jewelry
> http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
Looks like apples and oranges to me.
For those who didn't get the link to work:
Microsoft Windows Is A Cheaper Development Environment Than Linux/J2EE,
Analysts Say
Wed Sep 10, 3:35 AM ET
Add Technology - TechWeb to My Yahoo!
Gregg Keizer , TechWeb News
A pair of research firms on Tuesday armed Microsoft with more ammunition
in its tussle with Linux (news - web sites), the open source operating
system.
According to a report released Tuesday by Forrester Research -- and
commissioned by Microsoft -- both large and medium- sized businesses
will find Microsoft's Windows a cheaper development environment than
Linux.
In its comparison of Windows and its .Net development tools against
Linux and J2EE-based tools, Forrester found that large corporations
developing a custom Web-based application using Windows will save 28.2
percent to create the application, then maintain and support it for
three years.
A medium-sized firm should save approximately 25 percent if it relies on
Windows and .Net rather than Linux and J2EE as its development and
support environment, said John Rymer, a Forrester vice president, and
one of the analysts who authored the report.
The study was done by interviewing IT managers at a dozen organizations,
seven of which use Windows, five which develop using J2EE on Linux
platforms.
The small size of the sample may give Linux supporters reason to
question the findings, but Rymer defended his methodologies. "It's like
reporting," he said. "After a while, you start hearing the same thing. I
think we got a good average idea of costs and development time."
The main drivers of the big differences in development costs, Rymer
said, were due to the higher licensing costs of J2EE and databases
sitting atop Linux, and the longer time necessary to develop the
proposed applications in the J2EE/Linux environment.
In the large enterprise (news - web sites) scenario, the licensing costs
for J2EE tipped the financial scales at $208,567 for the BEA application
servers, Oracle databases, and BEA development tools. Costs for the
equivalent Microsoft licenses, however, would run only $52,591.
Advantage Microsoft, to the tune of $155,976. That difference accounts
for about a quarter of the cost savings Forrester claimed companies
would see by going with the Redmond, Wash.-based developer's platform.
The other factor is time: it takes businesses longer to develop and
deploy custom Web-based applications using J2EE/Linux, on average three
months longer. That translates into labor costs savings for Microsoft
shops of $331,000, or about half of the .Net advantage.
But Rymer cautions against taking his findings and making general
degrees about Windows versus Linux.
"Frankly, we're tired of these kind of broad statements," he said. "In
the real world (news - Y! TV), there are different scenarios and skill
bases and cultures. This only focuses on one scenario, admittedly a
broadly-used one, but you can't use it to generalize."
Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner, agrees.
Silver co-authored a report released Tuesday by Gartner on the return on
investment (ROI) companies may see by migrating from Windows to Linux on
the desktop.
In his narrow-cast look at Windows versus Linux, Silver found advantages
to both camps. "There are situations in which a move to Linux OS on the
desktop will deliver ROI and does make sense," he said.
On the other hand, those scenarios are quite narrow in scope. "Migrating
desktops to Linux only makes sense in a very limited range of
situations."
Although Gartner's analysis showed that enterprises shifting to Linux
can save $80 on hardware acquisition costs and an average of $74 per
user per year on office productivity software compared to Microsoft's
offerings, he noted that enterprises could see the same cost benefit
simply by shifting from Microsoft Office to the Windows editions of
Sun's StarOffice or the for-free OpenSource.org suite.
"Enterprises need to separate the OS decision and the office
productivity applications decision," he said. "Companies can move away
from Microsoft Office and see some cost benefits, but keep Windows for
the hundreds of other applications they use."
In some instances, Silver said, Linux might be a good call. "Linux may
merit a migration," he said, in situations where enterprises are
thinking about moving employees who use a limited number of
applications, such as data entry, call center, and other structured-task
workers. And companies still relying on aging versions of Windows --
such as Windows 95 and 98, which are unsupported and barely supported,
respectively, by Microsoft -- will likely see a bigger return by
shifting to Linux than firms which use the newer, and more reliable,
Windows 2000 (news - web sites) and Windows XP (news - web sites).
Silver noted that while Linux may have a lower up-front cost -- thanks
to lighter hardware demands and a lower-priced client operating system
-- that's not the whole story enterprises must consider.
"Other costs, such as labor, training, and external services must be
considered," he said.
And there, Linux may not meet the needs of corporations, or give a good
return on investment. "Linux support on the PC is the exception and not
the rule, a challenge that an enterprise must consider when determining
the future of its desktop OS."
George
(text/plain)