Linux Saves Money

In another page in this directory, we examine non-IT related tasks that sap resources and distract staff for their job. Check out our Linux Total Cost of Ownership page for details.

Many vendors position their software for business consumption. Business expects to pay a premium because it needs the features, reliability and support the vendor provides.

But, what happens when Open Source software provides the features business users need at little or no charge? The result is that business who don't look at Open Source software end up spending much more than they need to just to run their non-strategic computing resources.

The Enterprise Mentality

Most people feel that retail, consumer software should be inexpensive while enterprise class software should be more expensive. This is certainly the case in competitive markets such as games, utilities and multi-media tools (CD-Burning software, Movie making software, clip art, etc.) sell for a few tens of dollars to consumers but at many hundreds of dollars to businesses.

Database vendors have gotten away with this kind of pricing for years, often selling their products at $1,000 to $2,000 per seat or more.

Enterprise Resource Planning companies like SAP and QAD also charge in this range for their software. But, their software powers businesses that earn $millions to $billions per year.

A relative new-commer to the Enterprise Club is Microsoft. Their pricing model is complex and dependent on many arrangements including volume, license model, products used, etc. making it difficult to produce accurate estimates of what the software would actually cost. But, regardless how you acquire it, Microsoft software can add up to significant money.

Here is a simple table that shows how much money a 100 person organization can spend provisioning Microsoft products for their desktop and server needs for just file and print sharing and e-mail, at retail level pricing (includes back up software)^*:

One Hundred Person Microsoft Deployment

Quantity	Description	Unit Cost	Extended Cost
100	Windows XP Professional per Desktop.	$250.00	$25,000.00
100	Office XP Professional (Full Version)	$700.00	$70,000.00
1	Windows 2000 Server with 25 Clients	$2,600.00	$2,600.00
4	Windows 2000 20 Client, Client Access Licenses	$1,200.00	$4,800.00
100	Windows Terminal Server Client Access Licenses - Included in Windows XP Professional	$0.00	$0.00
1	Microsoft Exchange Server Enterprise 2000	$11,500.00	$11,500.00
17	Exchange 2000 Client Access License (5 pack)	$720.00	$12,240.00
1	Veritas Backup Exec. Rel. 9.0	$900.00	$900.00
1	Backup Exec. Agent for Exchange (Rel 9.0)	$1,050.00	$1,050.00
			____________
	Total for 100 Users (before Tax)		$128,090.00
			===========
	Cost Per User		$1,280.90

^*Prices are estimated selling prices based on wholesale quantity one as of April, 2003. Prices are in Canadian dollars and assume standard retail margins at wholesale prices from a low volume retailer. Your prices will vary.

With Linux, the cost of a similar deployment could be as low as $0.00 and as high as $4,000.00!

Enter Linux and Open Source

Microsoft would have you believe that you have no choice but to pay $1,200.00 or more for your desktop licenses. But, there are alternatives. You could:

• Extend The Life of your existing desktop software, or
• Replace Proprietary Software with Linux and OpenSource alternatives.

Save Money - Extend The Life Of Your Existing Software

Like most organizations, your company probably owns many copies of older Microsoft desktop operating systems like Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME. Additionally, you probably also own many copies of Office 97 and Office 2000.

There are Linux enhancement products that allow you to centralize those licenses onto a single Linux server and then deploy them on demand to your client desktops.

There are many advantages to this alternative. It:

• Preserves your investment in existing desktop o/s and office software.
• Simplifies administration by turning the desktop into a simple appliance. If it breaks, just swap it out, as no user data is stored on the desktop.
• Improves Security because users cannot load unauthorized software onto their system.
• Speeds Recovery as completely damaged Windows sessions can be restored from back up in as little as a few minutes.
• Improves Reliability because Linux is a much more robust and efficient operating system than Microsoft's Win9x products.
• Reduces Capital Outlay because sessions are served from a single server, not expensive desktops.

Application Enhancements Inc.sells the Win4Lin Windows consolidation product. It is priced as low as $75 ($CDN) per user. This product is stable, reliable and can serve many more sessions than a similarly equipped Citrix or Terminal Server can. Multiple configurations are simple. They make license tracking easy and help to ensure your users get (and you pay for) just the software they need.

Win4Lin is compatible with most applications that run natively under Windows 98 or Windows ME..

Save Money - Replace Proprietary Software

Linux and Open Source products offer robust, reliable replacements for expensive proprietary software. It is safe, well supported and efficeintly runs on modest hardware.

To date, most Linux deployments are targeted at server and network appliance replacements. Below is a table of proprietary products and the Linux components that can be used to replace them.

Proprietary Product	Linux Replacement
Microsoft File & Print Services	Linux and Samba. Samba is an open source re-implementation of Microsofts SMB (or LanManager) file and print sharing protocols. Samba is reliable, fast and well supported. AEI has clients that have been using Samba for over 7 years. In many cases, individual users don't even know there is no Windows server!
Microsoft IIS	IIS has been a major source of security issues with Windows 2000. Currently, it has been heavily patched and can be made to run securely and reliably. However, Microsoft is replacing IIS 5.x with IIS 6 on Windows 2003. Additionally, while IIS is free, some addon components to IIS are not. Microsoft Proxy Services for IIS costs you extra.
Microsoft Office WordPerfect Office Lotus SmartSuite	Linux ships with the OpenOffice office suite. OpenOffice includes a Word Processor, a SpreadSheet, and a Presentation Tool. OpenOffice is entirely free and can be deployed on OS/2, Windows, Linux and Solaris without charge.
Microsoft OutLook	The folks at Ximian have released Evolution, their Microsoft Outlook work-alike. Evolution is very much like Outlook so there is no real learning curve. It runs natively on Linux and can be upgraded to work with MS Exchange and compatible mail servers.
Microsoft Client Operating Systems	Linux distrubtions from RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and others offer complete desktop functionality at little or no cost. RedHat and Mandrake make their retail products available for free download and free redistribution. All Linux distributors (except Debian) offer commercial versions with extended support.
Microsoft Server Operating Systems	RedHat, SuSE, SCO and Mandrake (and others) offer server versions of Linux that provide improved performance, scalability, security and are available with extended support. Some Linux distributors even include clustering capabilities for truely enterprise class performance and reliability. Application Enhancements Inc. uses RedHat products for all of it's servers. AEI sells and supports RedHat's retail products and their advanced server products including: RedHat Advanced Server is RedHat's Data Center edition. It offers support for Clustering, up to 8 CPUs and 16GB of RAM and as much disk space as you can attach. Like all Linux's there are no user licenses or Client Access Licenses. RedHat Enterprise Server is RedHat's Server edition. It offers support for up to 2 CPUs and 4GB of RAM and as much disk space as you can attach.

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