Replacing Linux with Windows saves £1 million

By Stephen Withers
Thursday, 04 December 2008 02:05

Open Source

A UK company says its switch from Linux to Windows will save it £1 million (almost $A2.3 million). How does that work?

According to a case study published by Microsoft, British tool and equipment hire specialist Speedy Hire has junked the Linux and OpenOffice based systems running in its depots in favour of Windows and Microsoft Office.

Why? Because the company expects to save £1 million over five years. Saving £200,000 a year doesn't sound quite so impressive, but we'll let that pass.

The hardware running in Speedy Hire's depots was due for replacement, so the savings started with the choice of Wyse V90 Winterms rather than regular PCs.

"We discovered that the personal computers required to roll out Windows XP Embedded operating system using Citrix were much cheaper than those required to run Linux,” said infrastructure manager James Fleming.

It's hard to tell whether he's talking about a like-for-like comparison. A thin client for Windows might be cheaper than a full-blown desktop PC, but Wyse bills the V50 as the Linux equivalent of the V90, and it is cheaper.

So we'll leave a question mark over hardware costs, at least in terms of generalising this to other companies.

Where else do the savings come from? See page 2.