MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-06-09 |
| FROM | Marco Scoffier
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Merrill Lynch: Linux saves money
|
A friend forwarded this to me.
I say either we can:
start a he-said she-said Linux saves money , no it doesn't thread.
Or:
Continue thinking Free Software is better b/c it is free, and genrally
less broken than proprietary problems.
--
Marco
> http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1014287.html?tag=fd_top
>
>
> Merrill Lynch: Linux saves money
> By Robert Lemos
> Staff Writer, CNET News.com
> June 7, 2003, 1:55 PM PT
>
> SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Merrill Lynch research shows that implementing
> Linux internally could save the company millions of dollars, an
> executive at the financial management company said.
>
> During a presentation Friday at the Enterprise Linux Forum here, Mark
> Snodgrass, vice president of Merrill Lynch's in-house technology
> provider, the Global Technology & Services group, said that the company
> has found that rebuilding its information infrastructure using Linux
> can reduce administration costs dramatically.
>
> In fact, Snodgrass found that although the software licensing costs of
> Windows was higher than Linux, the highest cost was in managing
> traditional Windows infrastructure.
>
> "It's the people that cost the most," he said.
>
> Merrill Lynch's new plans for its information infrastructure call for
> running much of its Linux applications not on their own physical
> machines but in virtual machines running on high-end servers. Such a
> scheme simplifies management and allows for rapid deployment of new
> Linux "servers" by activating a copy of a stored preconfigured image in
> as little as 2 minutes 14 seconds.
>
> "We are not trying to promote Linux," Snodgrass said. "We are just
> trying to reduce the cost of ownership."
>
> Using such virtual Linux servers to store files could cut costs
> dramatically, he said. Keeping their file systems on Windows servers
> would have cost the company $600,000 in hardware and five times that to
> pay for the personnel to manage the servers.
>
> "We know that Linux is not for everything," he said. "But there are not
> many applications that require more than Linux can give us."
>
> Snodgrass's group proposed replacing the company's Microsoft Exchange
> servers with a Linux-based product that would have all the same
> collaboration features and have a cost savings of 70 percent to 80
> percent. However, for other reasons that Snodgrass wouldn't discuss,
> the company's executives decided to stick with Exchange but outsource
> the management of the groupware to save money.
>
> Not everyone agrees that Linux saves money, however. Last year, market
> researcher IDC released a report, heralded by Microsoft, indicating
> that the five-year cost of ownership for four out of five applications
> would be lower if Microsoft software was used. The sole Linux winner
> was Web server software, according to the report.
>
> Snodgrass said he wasn't familiar with the study, but his own data
> indicated that running virtual Linux servers saved a lot of money
> compared with running those same services under Windows.
>
> "We've done our numbers, and we are a bank, so we know our numbers," he
> said.
>
> Other companies apparently have crunched the numbers and come to the
> same conclusion.
>
> Telecommunications provider Verizon Communications disclosed that it
> saved nearly $6 million in equipment costs by moving its programmers to
> Linux from proprietary-Unix and Windows workstations. In October 2001,
> Amazon.com revealed that it had replaced Web application servers
> running on a proprietary-Unix system with Linux, saving millions of
> dollars.
>
> Snodgrass said the next target for using Linux could be on the desktop.
> The company plans to do a pilot project that will allow thin
> clients--computers with minimal hardware requirements--to be used as
> workstations. The applications would actually run on Linux and Windows
> terminal servers. To a customer, the result would be the same, but to
> the company's administrators, all of the client's data would be
> centrally stored and thus, much easier to maintain.
>
> The irony that companies may be moving toward an infrastructure that
> resembles the mainframe-and-terminal setups of several decades ago
> didn't escape Snodgrass.
>
> "It's interesting when Solaris and Windows are the 'legacy,' and
> mainframes are the new big thing," he said.
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
--
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