Linux saves money

A Merrill Lynch research showed that implementing Linux could save a company millions of dollars during a presentation last week at the Enterprise Linux Forum. The company said they found that rebuilding its information infrastructure using Linux can reduce administration costs dramatically.

Ironically enough, not long ago Microsoft had conducted a research that showed the complete opposite... but you know what they say "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics"

"We are not trying to promote Linux," Snodgrass said. "We are just trying to reduce the cost of ownership."

Using such virtual Linux servers to store files could cut costs dramatically, he said. Keeping their file systems on Windows servers would have cost the company $600,000 in hardware and five times that to pay for the personnel to manage the servers.

The linux tactic seems to be "lets have a look at Windows and see what's good and what ideas we could use for ourselves if we could figure out how it works without the source code...."

The MS tactic seems to be "linux is evil and stay away from it. Its cursed and will damn you until the end of time."

If you look at both perspectives, its the first that's much more mature and realistic than the second. And if someone figures out that, in the case of the second (MS) perspective, that you are cooking the figures, etc, then you are taken far less seriously on that topic in future.

What I am saying is - "Stop spreading lies about Linux and Mac OS, Microsoft. People will see through them and they will stop taking you as seriously."

This cost debate is quite funny to say the least...

Say we have company A with personell that only works on Windows machines and have never touched a Linux machine, and then the opposite at company B.

How will then any of the companies make money by switching systems? It's the administrative cost that is high, and if you need to send your personell on a month long course to get them updated on a new system which the likley will have much more problems with compared to the old since they simply don't know how to use it... Nahh, common sense feels like a better gauge here then these "anal"ysists