Windows and the total cost of ownership [LWN.net]

Windows and the total cost of ownership

Posted Dec 12, 2002 15:38 UTC (Thu) by dbreakey (guest, #1381)
Parent article: Linux and the total cost of ownership

Windows is "cheaper" to run for several reasons:

Inertia. It's worked well enough for us up to now; why change?
Top-down pressure. The company just got this sweet deal! Two thousand licenses at over 25% off!! The sales guy said we couldn't get a better deal anywhere else!!
Standards compliance. Microsoft is such a big company, sure, but even a huge company wouldn't go against Industry Standards, would it?

The problem seems to be that there are just too many executives who refuse to look at real world figures, which tend to be messy and disorganized; those nice, neat figures in the latest analyst's report are so much easier to deal with. And those analyst's customers are us, right? After all, we're the ones who paid a premium to get the report…

Fortunately, those seem to be a dying breed. Slowly, to be sure, but still dying off.

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