A study of total cost of ownership between server operating systems - Open source versus proprietary

After the big budgets of the Y2K scare, organizations mandated better control over IT costs. The open source movement counts as its advantage low cost software and potential ease of standardization. These advocates tout Linux as the cost effective option for enterprise servers of all types. The advantage of Linux is the initial cost: all the software is available for free. Proprietary software for servers, such as Microsoft's Windows server OS, has a large initial cost and ongoing annual user license fees. Microsoft and others contend that open source software for the server has hidden costs throughout the server lifespan. This causes open source to be overall more expensive than the proprietary operating system software. The previously published studies of Total Cost of Ownership between Linux and Windows may have contained bias in the test criteria, favoring one operating system over the other. This study sets the criteria of comparison equal with no clear advantage to either operating system. This project endeavors to determine if there is no significant difference in the average support time and effort, direct labor cost, and training availability and cost, between open source Linux and proprietary Microsoft Windows.