Novell has issued a joint press release with Microsoft, in which HSBC, a customer of joint technology from the two companies, claims that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux.


http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39286295,00.htm

-custangro

That should have been released on April Fools Day.

Yah, it does. (excluding price of the OS, its upgrades, it programs, and replacement hardware it screwed up due to crappy anti-virus and firewalls). But besides that, sure its cheaper. :-D

"The HSBC announcement will see the bank, which has 9,500 offices and 284,000 employees in 76 countries, sign up to a three-year support subscription to Suse Linux Enterprise Server from Novell."


The way I read this is that their EXISTING, multi OS version linux environment is more expensive than their Windows enviromnet (which I still highly question), but, they feel strongly enough that they will save money by consolidating the different linux versions to just SLES.

That article was _very_ weak on details

how is linux more expensive when you can get it for free?

They must mean effort, most people just want to set something up and not have to tweak it. However, they tend to get unstable operating systems in the process.

I'm generalising for a desktop deployment of Linux here. The OS is free, but...
- Customising it for your organisation takes time/money since it's unlikely that any distro will be exactly what you need right out of the box (same with Windows);
- Deploying it will have support costs;
- Training users on the new software will have costs;
- Insert other reasons here...

Linux and Windows both have costs outside of the software purchase price. The amount of that cost will vary for each organisation deploying the software. If you're already a Linux shop you probably won't spend much on getting extra support or on training your staff. If you don't already have Linux these costs can be high.

TCO needs to be done on a case by case basis to be of any use.

Then I wonder why a lot of ministers in EU and Asia have switched to OpenOffice or completly to Linux..
In Belgium after a long study on the cost and real ownership, they switched to... Novell Linux

http://www.novell.com/video/
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/4105/469
..

FUD FUD FUD...

Thats interesting. It seems like if the US, etc want more stable, secure databases, it would only make sense to switch to Linux.

I do not think that Antiviruses products that shoud be bought every year are cheap.And the instability of Windows needs a lot of care of computer experts.For me,Windows is a very expensive system and a very bad for the nervous system of a human being as well.

All these TCO numbers are pretty questionable in first place, as they really don't provide the methodology used in computing them. Instead, you usually see some official looking report that the TCO for [whatever] is an average of $4,372/year or some other rubbish like that. It all sounds very scientific and official, but without knowing how the numbers were compiled, they are meaningless. Tell me what metrics were used to comprise the TCO, and what the associated costs were for each one, and how those costs were computed, and I'd be willing to give TCO estimates a lot more credence than I do today.

As a side note, I'd be really curious to see how much of the Windows TCO is related to recovering from or fighting Windows-specific exploits like MyDoom, Blaster, SoBig, Sasser, and on and on and on. Obviously, it has to be a non-zero number, while the amount of Linux TCO for those same things is pretty much zero. Show me the numbers!

IMO,
Technology independance, visibility in the future, transparence has no price but are the most important things.
The future will tell.

That would make sense, but our government loves rewarding inefficient producers (think Harley-Davidson or Chrysler) and heavily taxing the successful ones.

Hello.
Well, I think Novell is now like a doll which is controlled by Microsoft's hand. It says whatever Microsoft wants. I don't think Novell's announcements can be trusted from now on. They use Novell (!!) SuSE servers? They are said to be more expensive? Well, who has the agreement with Microsoft? Novell maybe? Maybe if Microsoft wants they will raise the prices for Novell support, so it will seem that Windows is cheaper? Come on! Who told them to use linux shipped by Novell, a friend of Microsot? There IS RHEL or SLES or Debian or whatever they want. Why don't they show real numbers that really show that linux is more expensive? Why don't they show how they calculated this "fact"?

Novell is receiving a net ~$200 million from its Microsoft deal. Of course they agree with MS....