Just how big of a deal is this? If you have servers running Windows NT that have never been upgraded to Windows Server 2000, you are not alone. What's more, these servers are not doing insignificant tasks. If you visit Netcraft, you'll find that the Web sites of companies like eBay, Ikea, Gateway, and The Bank of New York run on Windows NT. So who of the Fortune 100 are now running on Windows Server 2003? It is not a long list: Microsoft.

Meanwhile, you'll find in this week's other story, 64-bit Wars, an equally interesting set of facts on the sale of servers. IT is buying again and it appears in bulk. According to research from IDC, worldwide server revenue showed its third consecutive quarter of growth in Q4 2003. That follows on the heels of numerous quarters of decline.

More importantly, both Gartner and IDC agree that the highest growth sector of the server market in 2003 was in Linux servers.  IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker reported 63.1% year-over-year growth for Linux servers. While naysayers will point out that Windows servers accounted for four times the server revenue over that same period, the pricing and licensing structures for these operating systems are so radically different that any such  metric is of little value.

What's more, that rise in Linux server sales is nicely reflected in the server sales of companies like HP and IBM, as Gartner reports that both giants saw 60% growth in their Linux server sales. So it should not come as a surprise that Gartner reports that IBM is now targeting installations running the virtually obsolete Windows NT for a switch to Linux. On this subject Gartner's George Weiss has quipped, "IBM doesn't target anything that's less than a multimillion dollar opportunity. Every win for Linux is a new opportunity for IBM to sell software and services."

Now add to the current market momentum the introduction of a new Linux kernel that makes an already enterprise-ready operating system all the more improved. That creates a potent mixture for disruption. With the Windows server market valued at about $16 billion a year, it should come as no surprise that any disruption will be fought tooth and nail.

Leading the charge at the forefront of this battle is, of course, Microsoft. The weapons of choice can be found on the "Get The Facts" page [ see left ] of the corporate Web site. To take on Linux, Microsoft has wisely chosen to soft-pedal technology and instead come on strongly with an all-out financial assault focusing on the Total Cost of Ownership.

Rallying close behind are software vendors of Windows system management tools. Following Microsoft, this group clearly has the most to lose with the growth of the Linux server market and Open Source software.

The result of this scheme has been a series of analyst white paper reports that all purport to show that Linux costs a lot more to operate than Windows Server. So expensive is the cost of running Linux, that it makes the cost of converting from Windows NT to Linux prohibitively expensive!

Anyone who seriously thought that such a  conclusion would go unchallenged, doesn't know if it's Pitt Street or Christmas.

 Outraged at the analysis, Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA), an industry body promoting Free and Open Source software in Australia, has fired back with its own broadside attack. This week OSIA issued a press release: "Beware of Misleading Reports About Linux and Open Source" in which the group argues that the recent barrage of TCO reports that claim to be independent are substantially biased. The upshot of the protest is that such reports "reduce the likelihood that Australian governments and enterprises can make accurate decisions about the efficacy of Open Source to solve their business needs."

To solve the problem, OSIA has a very strong recommendation: "All organizations considering migrating to, or adopting Linux and Open Source software, with analyst reports in hand, [should] thoroughly research any claims made by these analysts with respect to the attributes of Linux and Open Source." What really raises the ire of OSIA is that one of the co-authors of the IDC report  subsequently conceded to  BusinessWeek that Microsoft "selected scenarios that would inevitably be more costly using Linux."

Nonetheless, it was the latest press release issued by The Yankee Group that really fanned the flames for OSIA. Under the guise of an independent research survey, the Yankee Group proclaimed large sites converting Windows NT servers to Linux would face costs 300-to-400% higher than if they upgraded to a newer version of Windows

  These surprising results from "a survey of 1,000 IT administrators and C-level executives worldwide" were indeed quite startling and very definitive. The press release told a dramatic tale where "90% of the 300 large enterprises with 10,000 or more end users indicated that a significant or total switch from Windows to Linux would be prohibitively expensive, extremely complex and time consuming."  Those results were quite definitive; however, for OSIA the near unanimity was a bit too definitive.

Rather than pull stumps and declare the survey's respondents a bunch of malcontents, OSIA instead delved into the spinning of this survey. What they discovered was that all of the survey's data came from on-line respondents, which is not generally regarded as the best of methodologies. On top of that, these respondents came from subscribers to Win2Knews, a newsletter created by Sunbelt Software, one of the largest providers of of systems utilities for Windows NT, 2000/2003, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and a frequent commissioner of surveys of Windows systems administrators from The Yankee Group. Clearly, the last attribute that could be applied to this pool of survey respondents is "unbiased."

Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. In the words of OSIA, "The fact that none of this sample-selection information, indeed very little of the methodology by which many of these problematic documents are [sic] distilled is clearly stated upfront, is of grave concern. We call upon all firms that purport to undertake independent unbiased research in this domain to genuinely follow through on their claims."