Open Source Blog

Yes, sometimes Linux costs more than Windows
March 16, 2007

There’s a bit of a fuss going on in the blogoshere about the fact that Novell has endorsed the statement by HSBC that its Windows systems were cheaper to manage than its Linux systems ahead of its plan to standardize on SUSE Linux.

I’ve said before that there is much to be wary of in the Microsoft/Novell deal but on this occasion I have to say that the Linux and open source supporters have picked the wrong battle.

“I can understand that banks are good in manipulating numbers . . . but the fact that Novell can't put 2 and 2 together is beyond me,” is an example response, and it does Linux and open source in general no favours.

If you look at the details of the announcement (press release here, CBR news story here) you’ll see that the reason why HSBC had better management costs for Windows was because it had taken a proactive Active Directory-led approach to managing Windows, whereas a variety of Linux systems had been deployed an a largely ad hoc, application-led basis.

Having spoken to Matthew O'Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC global IT operations, we published the following:

“’A couple of years ago we commenced the global deployment of Active Directory and in doing that project we managed to demise a range of infrastructure servers,’ he added, noting that the end result was that it cost less to manage Windows servers than it did to manage Linux servers.

One of the reasons for that is that the company had taken an ad hoc approach to Linux deployment. ‘In the early stages of deployment we did tend to set the build to the specific application, rather than look at it as a commoditized server,’ O'Neill said.”

In this context – combined with the abundance of Windows skills compared to Linux – it is fairly obvious that Windows would end up being cheaper to manage per instance than Linux.

Instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending otherwise, Linux supporters would do better to recognize that the managed deployment of and management of Linux and open source software is critical to achieving the claimed total cost of ownership savings that it can deliver.

That is not to say that businesses need to sign up to Microsoft/Novell’s program of course, but for companies running Linux in mixed operating system environments (are there any other kinds of environment?) standardization and central management/interoperability is always going to deliver management cost savings.

There are questions to be asked about Microsoft and Novell’s patent covenant deal but criticizing HSBC for stating the obvious doesn’t get anyone anywhere.