Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Open source, including Linux, is being deployed by a majority of companies in 2004, yet we question whether customers are adequately prepared to deal with the costs and risks of managing these environments. The allure of free software is accelerating the deployment of open source platforms, but open source is not free and may actually increase financial and business risk. Discussions with five companies that tracked their total costs indicated Linux was between 5% and 20% more expensive than Windows. There were two distinct situations where Linux was the clear cost winner: Unix migrations and Linux-only deployments. Linux, and other open source software can provide big benefits to the organization, however, companies need to know what to expect, and plan appropriately to mitigate these concerns.

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