Microsoft: Linux is too costly

THE REALITY-DISTORTION FIELD around Microsoft headquarters seems to have shrunk. Although it once reached cross-continent into editorial offices on the US East coast and even overseas in both directions, now it appears ineffective just down I5 from Redmond a piece, in Olympia.

The Olympian is carrying a well balanced Associated Press article noting that "...Microsoft is shifting the battleground [against Linux] from schoolyard insults or techy speak to corporate notions of 'business value.'" (Olympia's the capitol of Microsoft's home State.)

In a few paragraphs that bring its general audience up to speed on Linux and that its Open Source business model is a challenge to Microsoft, the article quotes the Vole's director of server strategy whistling past the graveyard, then observes: "But Microsoft has reason to be worried."

The story mentions Meta Group's prediction that Microsoft will start to offer software for Linux by the end of 2004, as well as their projection that Linux will acquire 45% server market share by 2006 or 2007. Against these, it notes IDC's Vole-commissioned TCO study favoring Windows 2000 based upon IDC's attribution of higher Linux technical support costs.

The AP article leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions on the value of IDC's TCO study. It doesn't even bother to mention that IDC found Linux to be less costly on web servers. (Microsoft pay enough?)

One assumes this is because the AP article has other fish to fry: it doesn't mention users' Microsoft license tracking costs, or Windows' reliability, security, and scalability problems, or well-known findings that Linux sysadmins cost about the same as point-and-click MSCEs... but can handle four times more Linux servers than Volish administrators.

It alludes to other analysts' opinions that Linux market share growth is coming primarily at the expense of Unix systems rather than Microsoft at present. It observes that final battle between Linux and Windows won't be well and truly joined until companies have mostly abandoned Unix.

After explaining that the Vole's ill-timed attempt to impose new license terms has angered many IT managers in government and industry, the story concludes by saying that Microsoft's spin and commissioned studies won't matter -- that it will be up to customers to decide which costs less.

Their conclusion sounds reasonable. In the final analysis, the customers will decide. Maybe that's precisely what has Microsoft so frightened.

The article in The Olympian is here. µ