Published in AustralianIT, July 14 2003

MICROSOFT'S attempts to convince enterprises that Linux will prove more costly to manage are falling on deaf ears, a new survey has found.

Enterprise Linux users are far more enamoured of its reliability than its ability to lower total cost of ownership (TCO), the poll of enterprise customers by Computer Associates concluded.

According to the survey, which involved 2500 corporate customers across the globe, 95 per cent of companies rated Linux's reliability as its most important contribution to business value. Acquisition cost was the next most popular choice, cited by 89 per cent. TCO came out at the bottom list, with 65 per cent of companies listing it as a contributor to value.

Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief architect of the Linux technology group at CA, admits the outcome came as a surprise. "Everyone here believed the number one value for Linux would be total cost of ownership," he said.

The result suggests that Microsoft will have difficulties in its continuing attempts to counter the threat Linux represents to its lucrative server software business. Although the software giant's approach has become less aggressive in recent months, it is continuing to devote significant efforts to attempting to discredit Linux. Last week, it issued marketing materials to its sales partners to attempt to stem growing interest in Linux in the SME market.

Microsoft has frequently cited a study by IDC which concluded that the TCO for Windows servers was lower than for Linux, but it has been less keen to address the question of Windows' reliability.

A different IDC study released in March this year found that reliability was the most important IT consideration for 70 per cent of companies. "People are tired of having their servers go down," Mr Greenblatt said.

Angus Kidman travelled to CA World as a guest of Computer Associates.