Why Microsoft®

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Not truly "free"

Red Hat is free, but support is not. Red Hat requires annual support subscriptions for every server. If you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year. 

Reliability, usability reduce TCO

With Windows® server, support costs are significantly less. You can employ your own IT staff or find an outside firm.

With Red Hat, you'll need staff and Red Hat support.

Read the white paper to see how the TOC for Windows® servers beats Linux every time.

Reliability

Difficult to configure, manage

Linux servers are difficult to configure and manage. And if your IT staff makes any changes to the basic Red Hat configuration, your support contract could be terminated.

Avoiding those changes takes time and costs money.

Read the report to see how much time Linux IT staff spend on upgrades and patches.

Predictable standards, easy management

With Windows® Server, administration tasks and tools are standardized. That saves your IT staff time and money.

Additionally, Windows® Server is the most tested and certified platform for applications and hardware.

Security

Open source is insecure

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has, on average, 75 more published vulnerabilities than Windows®. Millions of developers contribute to Linux. That creates many opportunities for security holes.

“Although it’s still often used as an argument, it seems quite clear to me that the 'many eyes' argument, when applied to security, is not true.”
— Ben Laurie, Director of Security, Apache Foundation 

A comprehensive approach

Microsoft® developed the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to build a stringent development process. Engineers build threat models and use static analysis code-scanning tools during software design. Code then goes through multiple reviews before it reaches the final stages of production.

Choice

Vendor-specific system

Linux is just a operating system kernel. If you want to run it, you need to use a commercial distribution like Red Hat or SuSe. That means you'll be locked into vendor-specific versions of your system software.

And every vendor builds specific features into their distributions that make migration between systems difficult or impossible.

With Linux, you get fewer choices for applications, IT developers, channel partners, support and specific distribution.

More choice

Windows® provides more choices than any other server platform.
 
The Windows® platform is supported by:

Thousands of applications.

750,000 Microsoft® partners.

More than 450,000 Microsoft® Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) professionals.

More than 6 million developers.

The largest Independent Software Vendor (ISV) community in the world.

Manageability

Limited tools

Red Hat includes a single update tool, Yum. While the tool does assist with downloading update packages, it lacks the depth and breadth that IT professionals need. Yum cannot mange applications and workloads, mail and collaboration or database and business applications.

If they need more, they'll need to turn to third-party tools.

Advanced management included

Windows® server includes several management tools to help IT professionals monitor, update and expand enterprise systems. They can manage servers, mail, communication, databases, applications and more.

Interoperability

Open Source, closed interoperability

Open Source doesn't equate to open interoperability. Many mainstream enterprise tools aren't compatible with Linux. That means you'll need to develop a means to easily exchange information with other platforms.

True interoperability

Microsoft® is interoperable with other systems by design. You'll get out of the box connectivity with customers and partners.

Microsoft® strives to make its products work with multiple hardware and software platforms.