[Am-info] Fwd: Customer Focus: Comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX

[Dave Zapple]

Hi Everyone,
  Thought this e-mail from Steve Ballmer might bring things back in 
line. If anyone would like my opinions on the politics, I am more 
then happy to address the issues. I was a 1st Special Op's, AC-130H 
gunship Crew Chief from 79'-83' and will not be voting for the 
current administration. John Kerry  may have his faults but, I can 
not and will not support this administration.




>Reply-To: "Steve Ballmer" <10_5445_Li8z4NI020b6ENBEDzAIog@ceo.microsoft.com>
>From: "Steve Ballmer" <steveballmer@ceo.microsoft.com>
>To: <zappled@odrge.odr.georgetown.edu>
>Subject: Customer Focus: Comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX
>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:22:22 -0700
>Thread-Index: AcS8e8/KqqsFv/zjSCCEmckQMvFDtA==
>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 27 Oct 2004 23:22:22.0793 (UTC) 
>FILETIME=[CFE24B90:01C4BC7B]
>
>In the thousands of meetings that Microsoft employees have with 
>customers around the world every day, many of the same questions 
>consistently surface: Does an open source platform really provide a 
>long-term cost advantage compared with Windows? Which platform 
>offers the most secure computing environment? Given the growing 
>concern among customers about intellectual property indemnification, 
>what's the best way to minimize risk? In moving from an expensive 
>UNIX platform, what's the best alternative in terms of migration?
>
>Customers want factual information to help them make the best 
>decisions about these issues. About a year ago, a senior Microsoft 
>team led by General Manager Martin Taylor was created to figure out 
>how we could do a better job helping customers evaluate our products 
>against alternatives such as Linux/open source and proprietary UNIX. 
>This team has worked with a number of top analyst firms that have 
>generated independent, third-party reports on cost of acquisition, 
>total cost of ownership, security and indemnification. Some of the 
>studies were commissioned by Microsoft, while others were initiated 
>and funded by the analysts. In each case, the research methodology, 
>findings and conclusions were the sole domain of the analyst firms. 
>This was essential: we wanted truly independent, factual information.
>
>At the same time, our worldwide sales organization is going even 
>deeper with customers to understand their needs and create a 
>feedback loop with our product development teams that enables us to 
>deliver integrated solutions that support real-world customer 
>scenarios, and comprehensively address issues such as manageability, 
>ease of use and reliability.
>
>I'm writing to you and other business decision makers and IT 
>professionals today to share some of the data around these key 
>issues - and to provide examples of customers who opted to go with 
>the Windows platform rather than Linux or UNIX, and how that's 
>playing out for them in the real world. Much more information on 
>this is at www.microsoft.com/getthefacts.
>
>This email is one in an occasional series of emails from Microsoft 
>executives about technology and public-policy issues important to 
>computer users, our industry, and anyone who cares about the future 
>of high technology. If you would like to receive these emails in the 
>future, please go to 
>http://register.microsoft.com/subscription/subscribeMe.asp?lcid=1033&id=155 
>to subscribe.
>
>TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP AND ACQUISITION COSTS
>
>In the past few years, you haven't been able to open a computing 
>magazine or visit a technology Web site without running into an 
>article about Linux and open source. Not surprising: who doesn't 
>like the idea of a "free" operating system that just about anyone 
>can tinker with?
>
>But as the Yankee Group commented in an independent, non-sponsored 
>global study of 1,000 IT administrators and executives, Linux, UNIX 
>and Windows TCO Comparison, things aren't always as they seem: "All 
>of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including 
>Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have 
>begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical 
>service and support, product warranties and licensing 
>indemnification."
>
>Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant 
>Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be 
>three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to 
>deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer 
>release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a 
>change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
>
>Yankee also noted that, for larger organizations with complex 
>computer networks, it's important to look beyond Linux's initial low 
>investment cost and consider all of the TCO and ROI factors.
>
>This is exactly what one of our large enterprise customers, Equifax, 
>did recently. Equifax, a $1.2 billion U.S.-based enterprise with 
>4,600 employees in 13 countries, needed more computing power than 
>its mainframe systems could deliver for rapidly searching the 
>company's vast marketing database. They spent several months 
>conducting an internal analysis, which proved that, compared with 
>Linux, Windows would realize a 14% cost savings and shorten their 
>time to market by six months. (Equifax Case Study - 
>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15528)
>
>Another comprehensive, non-sponsored study by Forrester, entitled 
>The Costs and Risks of Open Source, drew a similar conclusion: "The 
>allure of free software is accelerating the deployment of open 
>source platforms, but open source is not free and may actually 
>increase financial and business risks."
>
>In early 2004, Forrester conducted in-depth discussions with 14 
>companies that had been running Linux platforms for longer than one 
>year to see what the costs really were. Several key themes emerged:
>
>- Few companies know what they're really spending. Only five of the 
>14 kept detailed metrics - and each of those five found Linux more 
>expensive (5% to 20%) than their current Microsoft environments.
>
>- Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for 
>Linux than Windows.
>
>- Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than 
>for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training 
>materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on 
>training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about 
>Linux.
>
>- All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux 
>personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When 
>they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating 
>hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources.
>
>One of our mid-market customers, Computer Builders Warehouse (CBW), 
>came to a similar conclusion. CBW builds computers to order for 
>education, government, and corporate customers. Several years ago, 
>it deployed Red Hat and Mandrake versions of Linux to support its 
>corporate, retail and e-commerce applications. Challenged with high 
>costs, CBW subsequently migrated to Microsoft Windows Server System, 
>and reduced its total cost of ownership by 25 percent. It also 
>consolidated its server population by 50 percent, reduced 
>maintenance time by 50 percent, and boosted developer productivity 
>by 200 percent. These benefits - totaling $650,000 in savings - are 
>dwarfed by the millions of dollars in new revenue that CBW expects 
>as a result of bringing a key security and monitoring product to 
>market more than two years faster than it could have done using 
>Linux. (CBW Case Study - 
>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15131)
>
>SECURITY
>
>About three years ago, we made software security a top priority, and 
>since then we've invested heavily in a multi-pronged effort to 
>improve software quality and development processes, and to reduce 
>risks for customers through education and guidance, industry 
>collaboration and enforcement. I think it's fair to say that no 
>other software platform has invested as much in security R&D, 
>process improvements and customer education as we have at Microsoft.
>
>Still, Linux has often been touted as a more secure platform. In 
>part, this is because of the "many eyeballs" maxim of open source 
>software that claims a correlation between the number of developers 
>looking at code and the number of bugs found and resolved. While 
>this has some validity, it is not necessarily the best way to 
>develop secure software. We believe in the effectiveness of a 
>structured software engineering process that includes a deep focus 
>on quality, technology advances, and vigorous testing to make 
>software more secure.
>
>A number of third-party reports have questioned how safe the Linux 
>platform really is. For example, a recent independent study by 
>Forrester, Is Linux More Secure than Windows?, highlighted that the 
>four major Linux distributions have a higher incidence and severity 
>of vulnerabilities, and are slower than Microsoft to provide 
>security updates.
>
>According to Forrester, Microsoft had the lowest elapsed time 
>between disclosure of a vulnerability and the release of a fix. They 
>found that Microsoft addressed all of the 128 publicly disclosed 
>security flaws in Windows over the 12-month period studied, and that 
>its security updates predated major outbreaks by an average of 305 
>days.
>
>Other independent sources of data show similar conclusions. 
>According to statistics posted on the security Web site Secunia 
>(http://secunia.com/product/2535#statistics_month), Red Hat 
>Enterprise Linux 3 has averaged 7.4 security advisories per month, 
>compared with 1.7 advisories for Windows Server 2003.
>
>And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO 
>Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as 
>pernicious as their UNIX and Windows counterparts - and in many 
>cases they are much more stealthy."
>
>This was a deciding factor in farmaCity's selection of Windows over 
>Linux. Headquartered in Buenos Aires, farmaCity is a rapidly growing 
>Argentinian drugstore chain with 50 outlets and 1,200 employees. 
>Although farmaCity's growth in recent years was a testament to its 
>success, the company's aging technology infrastructure had become a 
>hindrance to further expansion. After careful analysis, farmaCity 
>concluded that Windows would reduce network administration by 30 
>percent compared with Linux, and would also simplify identity and 
>desktop management. But the core reason for selecting Microsoft was 
>the increase in network security, complemented by the ability to 
>reduce patch-deployment time by 50 percent while cutting unsolicited 
>e-mail by half. (farmaCity Case Study - 
>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15269)
>
>INDEMNIFICATION
>
>Increasingly, we're hearing from customers that another factor in 
>their consideration of computing platforms is indemnification. In 
>2003, we looked at our volume licensing contracts to see what we 
>could do to increase customer satisfaction, and a top issue we heard 
>about was patent indemnification, which then was capped at the 
>amount the customer had paid for the software. So later that year, 
>we lifted that cap for our volume licensing customers, who are most 
>likely to be the target of an intellectual property lawsuit.
>
>Today, when a volume licensing customer - a business or organization 
>ranging from as few as five computers to many thousands - licenses a 
>Microsoft product, we provide uncapped protection for legal costs 
>associated with a patent, copyright, trademark or trade secret claim 
>alleging infringement by a Microsoft product. We do this because we 
>are proud to stand behind our products, and because we understand 
>that being on the wrong end of a software patent lawsuit could cost 
>a customer millions of dollars, and massively disrupt their business.
>
>No vendor today stands behind Linux with full IP indemnification. In 
>fact, it is rare for open source software to provide customers with 
>any indemnification at all. We think Microsoft's indemnification 
>already is one of the best offered by the leading players in the 
>industry for volume licensing customers, and we're looking at ways 
>to expand it to an even broader set of our customers. It's 
>definitely something businesses want to think about as they're 
>building or expanding their IT infrastructure.
>
>It was certainly a factor for Regal Entertainment Group, the largest 
>movie theatre chain in the world. In 2001, they moved to Red Hat 
>Linux. After evaluating Linux in their business for several months, 
>however, they migrated to the Microsoft platform - not only because 
>of lower TCO, stronger support and services, and greater reliability 
>and manageability, but because they were more fully indemnified on 
>IP. J.E. Henry, CIO of Regal Entertainment, told me that "reduced 
>risk was a decision factor in selecting Windows over Linux. We 
>needed to minimize our exposure to the distraction of potential IP 
>infringement claims, and we had a big enough open source presence to 
>be concerned. With the way that Microsoft stands behind its 
>products, it's one less thing that I have to worry about."
>
>UNIX MIGRATION
>
>One of the hot topics among enterprise IT and business decision 
>makers today is the costs and benefits of migrating enterprise 
>resource planning systems (ERP) from costly, proprietary UNIX 
>environments to Windows or other platforms. ERP integrates various 
>company functions such as human resources, inventories and 
>financials, and links a company to its vendors and customers.
>
>An independent, qualitative survey of organizations that recently 
>completed a migration of their SAP or PeopleSoft ERP system from a 
>UNIX environment to the Microsoft Windows Server platform found a 
>more than 20% reduction in the number of servers required compared 
>with UNIX. The survey, by META Group, found that in one large 
>telecommunications company, consolidation on Windows allowed a 
>greater than 50 percent reduction in the number of required servers.
>
>The survey also found a more than 50 percent improvement in areas 
>such as reliability, accessibility and scalability; significant 
>savings in cost management, IT staffing, performance monitoring and 
>vendor management; and measurable savings in technical support and 
>training. More than half of business function decision makers also 
>saw significant improvements in areas such as consistency, accuracy, 
>reporting enhancement and performance.
>
>"Windows is now a mainstream option for the vast majority of ERP 
>projects," META Group concluded.
>
>A great case study is the Raiffeisen Bank Group, the largest private 
>bank group in Austria with about 2,600 branches. It wanted to reduce 
>costs and provide better customer service by consolidating the 
>number of servers in its branches by 50 percent. Raiffeisen 
>investigated migrating from UNIX to either Linux or Windows. After 
>evaluating the possible solutions, the company found that Windows 
>Server 2003 would provide the most economical solution along with 
>better performance, while giving bank employees an integrated view 
>of customer information that they needed to improve customer 
>service. (Raiffeisen Bank Group Case Study - 
>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15519)
>
>One of our mid-market customers had a similar experience. Grand 
>Expeditions is a consortium of luxury travel companies that 
>significantly reduced its Web development and hosting costs, and 
>improved site reliability and performance, by moving from a 
>combination of Linux- and UNIX-based servers to Windows Server 2003 
>and the Windows Server System. The new system was up and running in 
>just 60 days, and is saving Grand Expeditions $200,000 a year. 
>(Grand Expeditions Case Study - 
>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15397)
>
>IN CLOSING...
>
>There is no question that customers are benefiting today from a 
>healthy, competitive IT industry. Competition requires companies to 
>really focus in on what customers want and need. At the same time, 
>customers have a clearer opportunity than ever before to evaluate 
>choices.
>
>For example, BET.com, the Internet portal created by Viacom 
>subsidiary BET Networks, did an in-depth comparison of Red Hat Linux 
>and Windows Server System. They found that Windows offered 30% lower 
>TCO, was more secure and reliable, and enabled quicker time to 
>market. As BET.com's CTO, Navarrow Wright, said: "When I looked at 
>all the costs - not just the straight price of software - a Windows 
>Server System-based solution made better financial sense than 
>sticking with our Sun and Oracle environment or switching to Linux. 
>We decided to migrate the whole enterprise from various software 
>vendors to standardize all of our software on Microsoft."
>
>By implementing Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional, Office 
>Professional Edition 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Content Management 
>Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003, BET.com conservatively 
>estimated that its workforce will increase productivity by 25-30%, 
>while saving significantly in licensing and redevelopment costs.
>
>As organizations increasingly rely on IT to perform mission-critical 
>functions, and with complexity a growing challenge, choosing the 
>right computing platform for the long term can make the difference 
>between profit and loss, and between future success and failure. And 
>it's pretty clear that the facts show that Windows provides a lower 
>total cost of ownership than Linux; the number of security 
>vulnerabilities is lower on Windows, and Windows responsiveness on 
>security is better than Linux; and Microsoft provides uncapped IP 
>indemnification of their products, while no such comprehensive 
>offering is available for Linux or open source.
>
>The vision and benefits of an integrated platform are what 
>distinguish Microsoft's approach to software. The Windows platform 
>today offers an unmatched level of value, applications availability, 
>simplicity, security and productivity. For Microsoft, this is truly 
>a cross-company effort that requires the server and client operating 
>systems to seamlessly deliver great usability and manageability 
>features, applications that deliver compelling scenarios, and tools 
>that enable developers and ISVs to easily and quickly build new 
>applications on the platform.
>
>It's important that customers have all the information they need 
>when making critical and expensive IT decisions. If the evidence at 
>our www.microsoft.com/getthefacts Web site doesn't sufficiently 
>convey the benefits and value of the Microsoft platform, we want to 
>hear from you so we can work even harder to get that information to 
>you. If you would like to have a more detailed discussion about your 
>company's IT needs, email Martin Taylor at martinta@microsoft.com.
>
>Steve Ballmer
>
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