Linux and the Total Cost of Ownership

We have seen, in recent days, a flurry of reports and analyst proclamations to the effect that, while costing more up front, Windows ends up being cheaper than Linux when the "total cost of ownership" (TCO) is figured. This cost includes things like staff time, training costs, etc. Certainly it makes sense to take a broad view of what a particular computing system really costs to operate. And, certainly, the analyst reports are objective; they would never, ever, after all, bias their reports in favor of the large corporation that has paid for the work. Even so, some questions come to mind. Your editor, who, in a previous life, managed a medium-size system administration group, observed that a single Linux or Unix system administrator could handle about twice as many systems as a single Windows administrator. As Windows systems replaced Unix systems on desktops, the administration staff had to grow. Many others have publicly noted a similar pattern. The observations of people actually running system management groups do not carry the weight of a scientific analyst report printed on Very Heavy Paper, but one might still ask: how is it that Windows is cheaper to run when more people are required to do the job? Windows systems have well-known virus problems. Large scale virus attacks have led to direct costs for companies estimated in billions of dollars. Most large networks require constantly-updated virus scanning systems, active mail filtering, and regular "don't open that attachment" user cluestick sessions. All this is expensive; have these costs been figured into the TCO calculations? Amazon.com claims to have saved $17 million by switching to Linux. E*Trade, too, saved a lot of money by going to Linux. The City of Largo, Florida, claims to save at least $1 million each year from its switch to Linux desktop systems. Why didn't they switch to Windows, if it is so much cheaper? (As an aside, this NewsForge followup on Largo is well worth a read). Linux-based systems can often run on the same hardware, without upgrades, for longer. There is far less pressure for constant system upgrades - and no EULAs requiring such upgrades. Have the costs of the additional hardware and software upgrades required by Windows been taken into account? Software license management is expensive. Companies must track the license for every application installed on every system on their networks, and they must cope with occasional annoyances like BSA audits and raids. Tracking thousands of licenses on thousands of systems is not a part-time job; have licensing compliance costs been figured into the TCO studies? And so on. The real point is this: we should not give up the TCO argument easily. Linux systems are, beyond doubt, overly difficult to administer - especially for certain kinds of environments. There is a lot that can be done to reduce ownership costs for Linux systems. But, even so, the "Windows is cheaper" argument has not been made in any sort of convincing way.