http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=12&foo=A%20new%20Microsoft-commissioned%20anti-Linux%20study%20debuts%2009-25-2006

“We found that many times when companies had chosen to migrate from UNIX to Linux, those decisions were made at a much lower level within the organization. In fact, it was often an IT administrator who was making the decisions, typically not using robust ROI (return on investment) or TCO analyses.”


yes.  because the people who _really_ know how much work is involved in supporting the different os's all live in upper management.

its so shameless its funny.

ROI = Reachable Orifice Increments
TCO = Total Cunt Offered

The true currency of high level management decisions.

Actually I see a hell of a lot of bad decisions made by people at every level based more on emotion than anything like actual facts.

Currently there is a government agency whose IT managers want to rip out a completely functional SMS (patch management) infrastructure and replace it with some Computer Associates stuff for no discernable reason. Oh, and based on CA's *own* documentation it's going to take five times as many servers to run the same jobs.

Oh, and their data centers don't have the power requirements to actually handle five times as many servers.

I will say that generally I see the bad decision coming from the level that's not actually paying attention to the forest, instead focusing on trees. (The bad decision is also often prefaced by "I have an issue with...")

(BTW, you may also be happy to know I've never suggested rip and replace to a customer)