price of open source/microsoft

Always a Rebel

Have any of you got price lists for open source and microsoft??? Thanks

AndrewMc

Always a Rebel wrote:

Have any of you got price lists for open source and microsoft??? Thanks

Can you be a bit more specific? Operating system, or applications? Some Open Source systems are free (like Debian, Ubuntu, etc) while some are pay-for (like RedHat.) Microsoft's (retail) prices are pretty standard. Check http://www.micromail.ie/ for a sample list of prices - they list both open-source and proprietary software.

Capt'n Midnight

The big difference is in the Client Licenses.
Microsoft tend to want ever possible client/device to have an individual license for every service.

eg: you want to extract info from a dB sever and email it.

1 SQL server license
1 SQL CAL unless using per processor license
1 Access license to use access
1 Exchange server license
1 Exchange CAL which allows you to use Outlook (the office license won't do)
1 Windows server license if you want to save the file
1 Windows CAL to if you want to save the file
1 Windows workstation license or if you use a different OS one Windows Terminal License

NB. with rare exceptions applications are not licensed per concurrent usage but per client that uses them, so if you have an infrequently used app or end of month report that is usable by everyone, then everyone needs a license.

Microsoft also do "rental" licenses, you pay every year to use it, but includes upgrades.
M$ don't really do upgrade licenses so your investment in SW depreciates to 0 over say three to five years, so you can't claim it's a fixed asset
M$ don't do per use licenses in the way adobe do (eg: 100,000 page licenses), yet. PPV software :rolleyes:
They don't do pay per minute/hour licenses.

Microsoft patches are free, but in many cases you may need to upgrade to a newer version to get somethings fixed, and pay full price to do so. some functionality is usually dropped in every second version, which can be extrememly annoying.

Licensing terms and pricing options change every few years making it impossible to plan forward as you have to second guess what must have feature will be there and whether you need to be locked in to a program where you can get the upgrades by paying 50% per year, or whether you decide that Office 97 format is good enough and decide to save up 1/3 of the cost price against the time you have to jump.

Licenses are faustian in their complexity, there is a three day course for experianced microsoft resellers to get to grips with it, and yet it's still hard to get clear info about options from them. /RANT

Always a Rebel

Thanks for yer help!!Really appreciated!!:)

dubhthach

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

1 SQL server license
1 SQL CAL unless using per processor license
1 Access license to use access
1 Exchange server license
1 Exchange CAL which allows you to use Outlook (the office license won't do)
1 Windows server license if you want to save the file
1 Windows CAL to if you want to save the file
1 Windows workstation license or if you use a different OS one Windows Terminal License

Indeed we recently paid over 2 and half grand on licensing for our new Exchange server (well the hardware cost 10k anyways). Price shouldn't be the only concern though, if ye don't have a background in *nix, ye might end up paying as much when it comes to training or getting someone in to setup for you. so it cuts both ways.

sean_or99

A simple rule of thumb that I would adhere to is that in a business environment client pcs should run windows, your servers should run linux.

Forking out thousands for Microsoft's gui sugar on windows based servers seems crazy.

Capt'n Midnight

dubhthach wrote:

Indeed we recently paid over 2 and half grand on licensing for our new Exchange server (well the hardware cost 10k anyways). Price shouldn't be the only concern though, if ye don't have a background in *nix, ye might end up paying as much when it comes to training or getting someone in to setup for you. so it cuts both ways.

2.5K without CALs ??
10K on the server I would have said 50:50 split between M$ app server liceses and HW costs..
If you don't have the enterprise version you are limited to 16GB storage and you might as well use software mirror drives and NtBackup to a local file. It doesn't take ages to copy 16GB these days.


The main difference is scale. If you setup an open source system and it works you can then usually roll out the same setup to the whole organisation at miminal cost. With most propietery licenses there is very little ecomony of scale. With propietery software you may hear claims about 99.999% uptime but that usually when using gained by using multiple servers and multiple licenses for them so that one can be rebooted at a time when you are patching it. In the windows world you are talking average server uptimes of a single digit number of weeks because of critical patches. It's not a cost itself , but managing it is a cost.

AndrewMc

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

2.5K without CALs ??
10K on the server I would have said 50:50 split between M$ app server liceses and HW costs..

Actually, that's something else. For reasons unknown, Windows is generally slower than Open Source systems doing the same thing (even Samba has been known to outperform Windows Server at its own job) so your hardware costs could be lower. Also, migrating from one machine to another later can usually be done much more readily. And you don't have to sit back and wait for the purchase order for the licenses to go through the mill, either.

Always a Rebel

Hi just wondering would anyone here have links to pricelists for microsoft xp professional software and licences??Thanks

Capt'n Midnight

www.micromail.ie - on line price lists - start there
www.sellsoft.ie - may be a bit less

Capt'n Midnight

sean_or99 wrote:

Forking out thousands for Microsoft's gui sugar on windows based servers seems crazy.

Finding the Wireless Zero Config service set to automatic by default is crazy. You just have to wonder do Microsoft do ANY security design walkthroughs !

dubhthach

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

2.5K without CALs ??
10K on the server I would have said 50:50 split between M$ app server liceses and HW costs..
If you don't have the enterprise version you are limited to 16GB storage and you might as well use software mirror drives and NtBackup to a local file. It doesn't take ages to copy 16GB these days.

Actually i forgot we ended up getting special Deal on the OS so the whole pricing was 10k (hardware + OS) when we had priced them separately initially it was 12.5k.

The the "Exchange 2003 Standard Edition" Database is no longer limited to 16GB's since SP1. By default yes it's set to 16GB but they allow you to change this giving a DB limit of 75GB's. "Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition" has a DB limit of 4TB's from what i recall

As for the Hardware costs 300GB SCSI discs at 15k RPM (1400+ a pop if i recall and we have 4 of them - so that's about 6k on the discs alone) don't come cheap ye know, neither does a proper Tape Backup system (with Media & SW) or 5years hardware support so it all adds up.