[Samba] Samba proposal document.

[John H Terpstra]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Joe E. Fieck wrote:

>   I have a project due at school and have chosen Samba servers to research.
> I am trying to find a source of information that discusses the corporate
> advantage to Samba.  How much money can a company save in NT server
> licensing fees for example.  Something that would help me write a fictitious
> business proposal. If anyone can quick point me in a direction here I would
> appreciate it.

Joe,

Suggest you contact a local PC reseller and ask for the price of MS
Windows 2000 Advanced Server and the price of Windows 2000 Server Client
Access Licenses (CALs).

Assume you find that MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server will cost you $1000.
Assume that MS Windows 2000 Server CALs (Client Access Licenses) will cost
you $40 per PC.

If you have a multi PC network, you would spend:

	No. of Servers X $1000 = Server license costs
	No. of PCs x $40       = Client Access Licensing costs

Now, find out what will be the cost of Software Assurance and add that to
the mix above. The result is what you pay for MS Windows at the back end.

Now add to that the cost of IT staff to manage the server installation.

To compare the cost of Samba:
	No. of Servers X cost of (Linux _or_ FreeBSD) = Server OS costs
	No. of PCs x Nothing for CALs                 = Nothing

Add cost of staffing to keep systems alive, bingo - you are home!

But what value are you going to place on:

	1. Higher and more reliable uptime?
	2. Ability to change code to do what you want?
	3. Better ability to configure the servers
		- ie: Samba does great server consolidation
		- ie: Samba allows multiple personalities per server
	4. Total control of feature creep. ie: With Samba you upgrade only
		if you want to. There are still servers running
		samba-1.9.15p8 (Dates to around NT3.5)
	5. Samba gives you more performance out of your hardware
		- lower hardware costs

Maybe some other budding list member can give you more factors to
consider.

- John T.
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org