A Microsoft-sponsored white paper from research group IDC, which compares the total cost of ownership of Microsoft"s Windows 2000 and Linux server environments across five enterprise computing workload situations at 104 companies, found that the Windows 2000 server offered a lower five-year total cost in four of the five selected workloads.
The paper, which Microsoft released to some customers, partners and press today, is titled "Windows 2000 Versus Linux in Enterprise Computing: An Assessment of Business Value for Selected Workloads."
It found that in four workloads—network infrastructure, print serving, file serving and security applications—the Windows 2000 server solution cost between 11 percent and 22 percent less than a Linux solution over a five-year period.
For the fifth workload, Web serving, Linux had a cost advantage of 6 percent compared with Windows 2000 server over the five-year period, the IDC said.