[ Thanks to Joe
Barr for this link. ]
“As happy as I am to see something finally displace the disgrace
that TPC-C ‘benchmarks’ have become over the years, the new
favorite faux-analytical geegaw that Microsoft’s marketing droids
are giggling over isn’t any better. I think you know what I’m
talking about: it starts with a T, ends with an ‘Oh!’ and spells
trouble right here in River City. That’s Austin, dude. Texas.“On the face of it, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) sounds like it
should be a valuable tool to project cost-estimates of various
software solutions. There is certainly truth to the notion that
purchase-price alone doesn’t determine total cost. The problems
with published TCO studies begin and end with the fact that their
allure is only skin-deep.“For one thing, TCO is like fine wine: it doesn’t travel well.
What may be true in one situation is reversed in another. What gets
trumpeted as a universal truth (‘Windows is cheaper than Linux’)
may or may not be true in a specific case, but it is most certainly
false when claimed universally…”