Sun's Solaris Operating Environment Achieves Dramatically Lower ERP PlatformCosts Compared to Microsoft's NT
PALO ALTO, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Sun's Solaris(TM) Operating Environment was shown to cost less to implement and maintain than Microsoft's Windows NT, according to a recent white paper issued by META Group, a leading network and infrastructure consulting firm. Windows NT implementation costs are three times as high as Solaris, and Windows NT infrastructure costs are twice as high as Solaris in enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions used by companies with up to $450 million in annual revenues. META attributes Sun's dramatically lower costs to its reduced complexity and greater scalability compared to Windows NT, a result META believes is due to Sun's use of common infrastructure components.
The white paper, "ERP Platform-Related Analysis Total Cost of Ownership Study: A Platform-Related Cost Analysis of ERP Applications on-Going Support Costs in The Mid-Tier," analyzes the total costs of ownership (TCO) for ERP initiatives. As more companies embrace ERP solutions, knowing the total cost of ERP initiatives becomes critical. Companies, typically, focus their purchasing analysis on upfront costs, assuming falsely that ongoing support and infrastructure costs are not significant. Yet, META discovered that ongoing support costs comprise 40 percent of the overall expenses of an ERP solution over a three-year period after implementation. Infrastructure costs alone equal 70 percent of the ongoing annual costs of ERP systems, yet they receive scant attention.
"With ongoing support costs equaling roughly 40 percent of the three-year total cost of ownership, IT organizations can no longer afford to ignore this significant source of costs," says Raymond Karrenbauer, vice president of META Group consulting and Fellow of META Security Group.
META Developed New Model for Study
Using end users' input and case studies from its clients, META created the Predictive Cost Model using actual cost drivers and cost buckets and then mapping the linkages between the two with highly accurate results. The model's data and logic were validated in more than a dozen trials and cross-referenced across multiple industry and trade sources. The Solaris Operating Environment and Windows NT platforms were compared since these two platforms comprise the bulk of METAs clients running Oracle and SAP ERP solutions. The study also includes estimation models for a three-year TCO for both Solaris and Windows NT. The value for their annualized revenue and number of ERP modules was inserted into the equation.
"We are not surprised that META Group found that the Solaris Operating Environment provided significant cost savings in both implementation and infrastructure costs compared to Windows NT," says Mark Canepa, vice president and general manager of Sun's Workgroup Server product group.
"The results confirm our belief in Sun's superiority in configuration management and scalability over NT. Now with the META model, IT managers can decide for themselves by comparing the TCO of the Solaris Operating Environment and NT-based systems on their annualized revenue and the number of ERP modules they are using. Based on the results of this study, META Group found that the Solaris Operating Environment had a lower platform TCO than Windows NT for small organizations (up to $450 million) in the Mid-Tier with ERP deployments."
METAs model breaks new ground since traditional cost models cannot accurately compute total ERP costs because they use static databases of software, hardware and personnel prices. To calculate the TCO, META's Predictive Cost Model took into account real-world drivers of ERP implementation costs. The models robust design enables accurate, quick resource and cost estimation for infrastructure planning. The model is developed and described in META Group's white paper, which can be downloaded from sun.com .
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- The Network is The Computer(TM) -- has propelled Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to ".com" their businesses. With $13 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at sun.com .
NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. |
