Unix & Windows Cost Analysis

Unix has been used to develop powerful parallel supercomputers. The clusters as well as the newest kernels should be comparable to Windows on multiprocessor systems. However Unix systems are generally slower than Windows, the best way to compare Unix systems and Windows performance would be on a cost per unit of work basis. The licensing costs are typically one-time costs that are acquired at the same time the hardware is purchased. It makes sense to combine the hardware and the software costs for performance purposes. The staff related costs are ongoing with system enhancements. We compare equally Unix servers and Windows servers, including the software is extremely necessary for the hardware to have any value, in which Unix would win in a variety of performance tasks.

Unix systems have a very large range of applications both commercial and open source. The platform is mostly built on open source applications. Unix systems have far more source applications than any operating system. There are almost no cost associated to the business needs that Unix applications cannot be met. Unix has the best and most diverse free support available out of the majority of the open source systems, which is often better than traditional commercial support. The limited support is automatically included with the purchase of any Unix box. Most major suppliers such as IBM and a variety of independent vendors provide the full support options. Ninety percent of organizations that use both Unix open source systems and Windows have determined that the costs of Unix environments are more effective under similar conditions.

Unix technology is based on a development model that limits on the revolutionary. However, Unix provides a server operating system with reliability and stability, comparable with any version of Windows.

Security is other cost factor, the default security characteristics of Unix depends on the distribution and installation. They apparently have a number of security issues as well as Windows, but they can be easily to be fixed. Unix is much less work than Windows, administrators can create systems with almost any mixture of functionality and security suitable to the server utilization.

Windows is an expensive system that typically delivers unneeded functionality, unwanted security and reliability, compared to free and/or low cost systems that the open source Unix systems can easily be made to be reliable and do what is wanted.