LinuxWorld: Total Cost of Ownership Series Revisited

“To most people, the total cost of ownership (TCO) concept is
about checks written. It relates to the total cost of the decision
to own or use something, and implies that the decision between two
choices — A and B — can be largely determined by comparing the
total costs associated with each. Implicitly this assumes that A
and B produce similar value, or returns to ownership. Since this is
rarely the case, most uses of the TCO concept in decision making
extend the idea beyond a simple “sum of checks written” to
incorporate some acknowledgment of the differences in benefits
available from each choice — even when those differences are
largely unquantifiable.

“In the specific context of the Unix versus Windows decision,
the most obvious problem with our understanding of the cost
components going into the TCO idea is that we cannot determine
whether Unix is cheaper than Windows without first defining the
terms of the comparison, and then the basis for making judgments
about the results of the comparison. Defining what we’re comparing
isn’t that difficult. While “Windows” is a brand label, not a
product or set of ideas, “Unix” is a name for a set of ideas
encapsulated in a wide variety of products.

“We can define comparisons in terms of real products embedded in
specific business and technology contexts. For this series, those
definitions were couched in terms of the system architectures
implied by the labels. Thus “Windows” means Windows client-server
with a PC on every desktop and applications on shared servers
accessed via local area networks (LANs); while “Unix” means Unix
servers with applications delivered via desktop smart displays
(defined below) and single-level networking…”

Complete
Story