Microsoft or Open Source - dicsussion at Scobleizer
Robert Scoble sparked an active discussion with his post commenting on Ross Mayfield’s list of 12 reasons why Ross does not trust Microsoft.
I added two long comments looking specifically at the point other commentors raised about Microsoft licensing costs. As a consultant who frequently talks with (and sometimes even gets paid to work with) early stage companies and their investors, I wrote these comments from the perspective of an advisor to someone writing a business plan for a software startup - looking at whether to build on Microsoft or Open Source technology.
My comments are reposted below:
I would agree strongly with comment #2 (and many of the following comments) - Complexity and unclearness in the licensing makes it very dificult to recommend MSFT solutions to startups, or even to large businesses looking at external facing applications.
I have yet to see an easy to obtain quote (and explanation) for how to build an unlimitted number of users web 2.0 application based on MSFT servers in a legal and fully licensed manner.
With open source systems in contrast I know already what the costs would be to scale up the number of servers - ZERO for the software, just the cost of the raw servers and rack space.
In working with my clients - both startups, investors and very large firms we rarely focus on the cost of a single server (perhaps a set of servers) but we do look at the overall cost and impact of a technology decision. With an open source solution we know that we’ll primarily be paying for specifically the software and services we need. With Microsoft based solutions we know that a noticible (and generally higher than the cost of the raw hardware) portion of our cost will be going to pay what we term “the Microsoft Tax” and that just gets us in the game, it is not typically the services or features we need, those cost addition amounts.
But then as the issues around licensing crop up, we find that we either have to invest a lot of time (and thus money) into understanding the nuances of MSFT’s licensing/versioning schemes or we can avoid all that by going with much cleaner and more scalable licenses from open source applications.
Consider planning an application that, if successful, will have 100,000 users. Assuming that it is more complex than a “simple” web app - do you really want to try to figure out how to buy 100,000 access licenses from MSFT? (yes, I know MSFT probably has some options that handle this case but even as a fairly sophisticated consultant, I’m not at all sure how to look for them)
- just take a look at http://selectug.mslicense.com/L1033/default.aspx
Please tell me that there is something better?
WHERE do I get a simple, clear, concise answer to “how much will it cost my startup to build, deploy and scale a MSFT based solution?” How much will it cost for our production systems? What about for our three tier deployment systems (i.e. development, testbed, production) along with backup/scale up capacity?
Shannon
I then followed up with a second long comment after further research on Microsoft’s own websites.
To expand on my comment - I just did the following experiment:
- go to www.microsoft.com
- follow links to Server systems
- try to walk through all the links to get to pricing (and figure out products) that might be involved in a Startup deploying a MSFT based solution
- get lost in MANY different, sales orientated (but overly text/jargon filled) sites each linking back and forth and ALL focused mostly on desktop systems. See http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/default.mspx for information on the apparently FIVE different “volume” licensing programs MSFT offers.
As a startup where would I start?
I would not have a lot of desktops, certainly less than 250, but I would want to try to just get a handle on costs (to plug into my business plan say). But each specific application I might look at building on top of - say MSFT Content Management Server, in turn requires other systems:
- see http://www.microsoft.com/CMServer/howtobuy/default.mspx
It requires Windows Server 2003 service pack 2 and SQL Server 2000.
I would then need to figure out the licensing costs for each.
Looking at SQL Server - http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx I see that there are THREE different versions, THREE different pricing plans (unlimitted users, client CAL, user CAL) but I also further see that the “example” pricing differs fairly radically (50% discount for some plans) but to get that, I have to figure out the volume license - and once again, I may be planning on only 10-20 desktops for my startup….
I further find that I have to be clear at this point in terms of how many processors on my server, how many servers, etc (and I’m not clear yet whether I need TWO or ONE or more servers just to deploy this solution - i.e. does SQL Server get deployed on its own server - I would generally recommend that but how does that impact my licensing needs?
And that’s just thinking about production. I need to replicate this environment in development and ideally being a company that plans for the future also have a test bed that is a staging area between development and product (i.e. a clean test environment) and probably some backup system for failover purposes.
So I look at “developer edition” - http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/development.mspx
Now I get pricing that is dependant on a “per developer” license. Again, I’m planning a startup so this is a bit unknown yet (and I’m not clear who is a “developer” - are testers develoers - probably. What about the CEO/management of the company? (for a startup probably as well)
This seems like a subscription (though pricing is somewhat unclear on this point) so I now have to build into my business plan about $3k per developer - probably workable for developers I hire full time, but unclear how I handle contract developers or other project work, or developers who might build on top of my systems but not work for me (i.e. I want to open up my api and deliver some of my stuff as open source, if we put up a development server and open it up for these developers to contribute to it what licensing covers that circumstance?)
And I don’t quite know what licenses cover my test bed.
Further - from just looking here it isn’t entirely clear if these cover EXACTLY the same systems as I would deploy in production. i.e. I don’t want developers building against a non-production ready product - I want them building (or at least capable of fixing bugs) against development environments which are EXACTLY the same as their code will see in production. (though possibly different hardware, I want the software versions to be precisely the same, down to the patch order and level).
Now I go back to the SQL server page, I see SEVEN different subjects under “licensing considerations” as well as SIX different components which could be licensed.
At this point I figure that understanding the licensing options NOW will take me 1-2 weeks, possibly more. That’s just to figure it out sufficiently for my business plan (and remember, this scenario is at the business plan writing stage, we don’t yet have our code written or fully understand our customers, usage levels or scaling needs - I just want enough information to put numbers on paper which I and my financial backers could live with)
So I try reading the downloadable white papers/FAQs (we’ll leave aside that these are downloadable only in .doc format - I’m being generous and trust that MSFT of all people won’t have a virus attached…).
I’m still not at all clear - and further the note that there are volume discounts as well as negotiated discounts from ISPs, ASPs and OEMs - not sure eactly what those are in this context but in any case it seems to mean that I can probably toss the retail price out….
Frustrating!
In contrast, to do this same exercise for a LAMP stack solution I can buy (or download) all the software I need on a few cd’s/dvds from RedHat (or IBM or many others), deploy it as many times as I need on interchangable systems (with how ever many processors as I want/care to buy). I can then get a fairly simple quote from one or more vendors for support and some advanced features (developer licenses from ZEND for example for PHP) but for planning purposes I can get all this pricing in a few days, feel very comfortable about it and see how and where my costs would grow as my business takes off.
Further, I know that if I need to quickly add systems in such a solution, I do not also have to quickly provision licenses (say I’m recovering from a disaster, building out a server farm in a new country, scaling up from being Slashdotted etc). Nothing in what I’ve read on microsoft.com makes me confident that “quick” and “licensing” belong in the same sentence.
Shannon