Novell, who you will remember are now Linux advocates and are open source crazy, have hit out at a recent study sponsored by Microsoft, which claims that open source applications are more difficult to manage than Windows and Windows apps. Novell claims that the study serves only to confuse and mislead the market. The study was carried out by Microsoft certified partner Security Innovation, and claims that Linux system administrators take something like two thirds longer to address new business requirements than Windows administrators do.
The study compared two teams of experienced IT administrators running Windows Server 2000 and Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux 8, then monitored their progress as they upgraded to Windows Server 2003 and Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 respectively.
Novell has since highlighted numerous flaws in the methodology of the survey, pointing out that few of the interoperability problems alleged in the report actually exist.