The question of whether Linux's total cost of ownership (TCO) is lower than that of Windows or other operating systems has inspired many fierce debates among enterprise IT professionals. On initial review, the answer seems simple. Linux's low- or no-cost license fees should drive down the TCO of the open source OS, compared to Windows or other flavors of Unix. But the debate -- like the larger debate of Linux vs. Windows -- is complicated by administration and support costs that vary for each installation. TCO is hard to pin down
Most analysts, if asked whether Linux has a lower TCO than other systems, will answer, "It depends." That's because a wide variety of factors affect any TCO calculation: what function you're using Linux for, what kind of hardware (and how much of it) you're using, if you're transitioning from Windows or starting from the ground up, and if your IT staff has any experience with a Unix-like OS. Those variables and others -- such as what distribution of Linux is in play and the version of Windows or Unix it's being compared with -- make it impossible to plug numbers into a preset formula and spit out an easy answer, explained Al Gillen, research director of systems software for tech analyst IDC, which has been doing TCO studies for several years. "It's not trivial to figure out, and even when we do a TCO study, you have to remember that our TCO studies are extremely specific in nature," Gillen said. The IDC studies examine a specific workload on two specific kinds of systems with specific kinds of hardware. "The chances are the stack that we select is probably not going to be representative of anybody's real-world configuration," he added. The numbers you can measure and compare with often end up with complex explanations attached. For example, take licensing fees, where Linux easily beats Windows or other Unixs. When you figure out TCO over a three- to five-year period, the initial licensing costs end up being a miniscule piece of the cost, compared with large-ticket items like Linux administration and support, Gillen noted. "The cost of acquisition of software, hardware -- all the things you buy up front -- that's a minority element of the total cost of ownership of any operating system," he said. "Whether you pay $2,000 for a Windows license or $49.95 for a boxed copy of Linux, over the course of its lifetime, that ends up being a minor cost." Gillen pointed out that $2,000 divided over five years is $400. "What is the cost for a technical support professional per hour to be there on staff? Probably a couple of hundred dollars," he noted. The cost of administration
Microsoft has argued that the Windows administrator costs easily wash away the Linux licensing cost advantage. The standard Windows argument is that a larger pool of Microsoft-certified administrators exists, so a Windows admin should cost less than a Linux admin. Gillen said the argument seems to make sense initially, but like other TCO arguments, it is more complicated than it appears. As one Linux consultant noted, plenty of MCSEs are available, but that doesn't mean they're all qualified. "If you throw a rock, you'll probably hit an MCSE in the head," said Brian Schenkenfelder, president of Kentucky-based Linux consultancy n + 1. "The problem is, how many of them are any good? There are a lot of paper tigers out there, and that's true of both sides." Schenkenfelder argues that the typical Linux administrator can handle more than the typical Windows admin. "What I've found is that a Linux administrator who knows what he's doing should be able to administer two to three times the amount of boxes a Windows administrator should be able to administer," he said. A July study, conducted by Chad Robinson, senior research analyst at tech/business researcher Robert Frances Group (RFG), supports Schenkenfelder's claims. Robinson acknowledges that experienced admins for Linux or Solaris can be more expensive in some parts of the United States but noted that many of them have been working with Unix for dozens of years. "One of the things that Microsoft is starting to lose out on now, and I'm not sure they realise this yet, is that they still claim Windows administrators are cheaper," Robinson said. "But the flip side of the same coin is that if one of my administrators on a Windows environment can manage only 10 to 15 systems at a time, but my Solaris admin or my NetBSD or my Linux admin can manage 1,000 servers at a time, I need fewer admins. Sure, the salary's more expensive, but I get more life out of them."