Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Open Source Alternative to Enterprise Infrastructure Applications
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | It comes to no surprise that one of the most desirable advantages that
> | Open Source software provides is by providing a significant cost saving
> | in Software Licensing across the enterprise. This can comprise as much as
> | 50% of a project budget and also as much as 30% of an annual IT budget.
> `----
One of the factors that people don't always look at is the cost of
capital expendatures. It's much easier to get support services,
consulting services, and staff employee labor. In most companies there
are regulatory, financial, and fiscal reporting issues related to
purchase of even fast-depreciating assets such as software and computer
hardware.
This is why so many companies had less trouble getting approval for
"Support Contracts" than they had in getting "replacement hardware".
With Sarbanes-Oxlely, and much higher scrutiny of how businesses are
spending theri money and how that money is being spent, spending
$millions on software that is "obsolete" before it has even been
depreciated, or spending $billions on PCs at "peak price" immediately
after the release of a new Operating System, only to have those same
PCs selling at less than 1/2 that price 6 months later, tends to create
some issues with the Securities Exchange, Public Utilities, IRS, and
other regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and even international
levels, things get really complex.
One of the reasons that Linux has found it's way into so many servers
and desktops was because Linux is usually a "petty cash expense"
instead of a "capital asset". Often, even when the software is
purchased from a retailer, it's even under the $75 price that mandates
a receipt. The PC it is installed on, has often already been
depreciated to $0, or has been declared "obsolete" by Microsoft, even
though it's only in the second year of it's 5 year depreciation cycle.
The company can't throw them away, because these are still valued
capital assets, and they have to pay for environmentally safe disposal.
It's actually cheaper to send the fully functional PCs to Africa,
Brazil, or China, than it is to turn them over to someone who will
"shred" them.
> http://www.aegeon.com.au/go/article/reduce-software-licence-costs
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