Microsoft Chief Steve Ballmer Fights Back Against Linux - Read Full Text of the Ballmer Email

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer sent an email to its IT executive e-mail list of customers around the world yesterday fighting back against Linux. Below is the full text of the email sent yesterday: In the thousands of meetings that Microsoft employees have with customers around the world every day, many of the same questions consistently surface: Does an open source platform really provide a long-term cost advantage compared with Windows? Which platform offers the most secure computing environment? Given the growing concern among customers about intellectual property indemnification, what's the best way to minimize risk? In moving from an expensive UNIX platform, what's the best alternative in terms of migration? Customers want factual information to help them make the best decisions about these issues. About a year ago, a senior Microsoft team led by General Manager Martin Taylor was created to figure out how we could do a better job helping customers evaluate our products against alternatives such as Linux/open source and proprietary UNIX. This team has worked with a number of top analyst firms that have generated independent, third-party reports on cost of acquisition, total cost of ownership, security and indemnification. Some of the studies were commissioned by Microsoft, while others were initiated and funded by the analysts. In each case, the research methodology, findings and conclusions were the sole domain of the analyst firms. This was essential: we wanted truly independent, factual information. At the same time, our worldwide sales organization is going even deeper with customers to understand their needs and create a feedback loop with our product development teams that enables us to deliver integrated solutions that support real-world customer scenarios, and comprehensively address issues such as manageability, ease of use and reliability. I'm writing to you as a subscriber to executive emails from Microsoft, and to other business decision makers and IT professionals, to share some of the data around these key issues - and to provide examples of customers who opted to go with the Windows platform rather than Linux or UNIX, and how that's playing out for them in the real world. Much more information on this is at UNIX MIGRATION One of the hot topics among enterprise IT and business decision makers today is the costs and benefits of migrating enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) from costly, proprietary UNIX environments to Windows or other platforms. ERP integrates various company functions such as human resources, inventories and financials, and links a company to its vendors and customers. An independent, qualitative survey of organizations that recently completed a migration of their SAP or PeopleSoft ERP system from a UNIX environment to the Microsoft Windows Server platform found a more than 20% reduction in the number of servers required compared with UNIX. The survey, by META Group, found that in one large telecommunications company, consolidation on Windows allowed a greater than 50 percent reduction in the number of required servers. The survey also found a more than 50 percent improvement in areas such as reliability, accessibility and scalability; significant savings in cost management, IT staffing, performance monitoring and vendor management; and measurable savings in technical support and training. More than half of business function decision makers also saw significant improvements in areas such as consistency, accuracy, reporting enhancement and performance. "Windows is now a mainstream option for the vast majority of ERP projects," META Group concluded. A great case study is the Raiffeisen Bank Group, the largest private bank group in Austria with about 2,600 branches. It wanted to reduce costs and provide better customer service by consolidating the number of servers in its branches by 50 percent. Raiffeisen investigated migrating from UNIX to either Linux or Windows. After evaluating the possible solutions, the company found that Windows Server 2003 would provide the most economical solution along with better performance, while giving bank employees an integrated view of customer information that they needed to improve customer service. (Raiffeisen Bank Group Case Study - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15397) IN CLOSING... There is no question that customers are benefiting today from a healthy, competitive IT industry. Competition requires companies to really focus in on what customers want and need. At the same time, customers have a clearer opportunity than ever before to evaluate choices. For example, BET.com, the Internet portal created by Viacom subsidiary BET Networks, did an in-depth comparison of Red Hat Linux and Windows Server System. They found that Windows offered 30% lower TCO, was more secure and reliable, and enabled quicker time to market. As BET.com's CTO, Navarrow Wright, said: "When I looked at all the costs - not just the straight price of software - a Windows Server System-based solution made better financial sense than sticking with our Sun and Oracle environment or switching to Linux. We decided to migrate the whole enterprise from various software vendors to standardize all of our software on Microsoft." By implementing Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional, Office Professional Edition 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Content Management Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003, BET.com conservatively estimated that its workforce will increase productivity by 25-30%, while saving significantly in licensing and redevelopment costs. As organizations increasingly rely on IT to perform mission-critical functions, and with complexity a growing challenge, choosing the right computing platform for the long term can make the difference between profit and loss, and between future success and failure. And it's pretty clear that the facts show that Windows provides a lower total cost of ownership than Linux; the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows, and Windows responsiveness on security is better than Linux; and Microsoft provides uncapped IP indemnification of their products, while no such comprehensive offering is available for Linux or open source. The vision and benefits of an integrated platform are what distinguish Microsoft's approach to software. The Windows platform today offers an unmatched level of value, applications availability, simplicity, security and productivity. For Microsoft, this is truly a cross-company effort that requires the server and client operating systems to seamlessly deliver great usability and manageability features, applications that deliver compelling scenarios, and tools that enable developers and ISVs to easily and quickly build new applications on the platform. It's important that customers have all the information they need when making critical and expensive IT decisions. If the evidence at our