On the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) issues, DiDio found that the majority of enterprises believed that rather than lowering their costs, moving to Linux would actually increase them. "In large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux, would be three to four times more expensive and take three times as long to deploy as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer Windows release."
That's because of both the dominance of Windows in enterprises, and what DiDio calls the "familiarity of Windows" among CIOs, CEOs, and IT administrators.
"In a fully-realized enterprise environment that's built around Windows, you know where the trouble spots are," she said. "Why would you then switch to Linux, and take a couple of steps backwards? Enterprises have this huge embedded [Windows] infrastructure. How do you rip out and tear down what you have?"
Among those polled, over half said that they plan no changes to either their Windows server or desktop environments. (While 54 percent said they wouldn't switch from Windows servers, 57 percent said they had no plans to swap out Windows on the desktop.) Only 25 percent indicated that they would migrate "some" of their Windows servers to Linux; 21 percent said they would turn a portion of their Windows desktops into Linux systems.
It's the hidden costs of Linux that scare off a lot of enterprises. A majority of large enterprises with more than 5,000 end users said they would not install Linux as their primary server OS in the foreseeable future because it requires from 25 to 40 percent more support specialists than Windows or Unix. Additionally, those polled in top markets in the U.S. and Europe noted that skilled Linux administrators command a 20 to 30 percent greater salary than their Windows and Unix counterparts.
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