[ILUG] IDC TCO report doesnt show cost of viruses or clients.

[James McCarthy]

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The IDC report says:
Cost over 5 years with 100 clients (guess thats the cost per server)
                            Networking   File        Print       
Security   Web
Microsoft   TCO  11,787           99,048  86,849    70,495      32,305

But in 2003 companies lost $55Bn in damages from viruses.
source is: 
http://www.silicon.com/software/security/0,39024655,39117842,00.htm
these viruses were nearly all Windows based.

In 2003 MicroSoft posted total income of about $32Bn
source is: 
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2003/tc20030814_6379_tc047.htm

Roughly 1/5 of business income for MS comes from once off licence 
purchased by businesses(basicaly a simple pre-installed pc)
If the income level for businesses is lower than this the cost per pc 
goes up even more.
source is: 
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/update/2004/04apr/0404hcbmp_ch.htm 



Which works out to $6.4Bn in 2003, lets assune theyre all XP-Pro, which 
cost about $350 per copy(pre-installed).
Thats 18,285,714 copies of XP (probably less), so divide the amount lost 
to viruses by the number of copies of XP and you have the virus cost per 
copy.
Which is $3008 per Windows pc per YEAR(and the costs continue to rise, 
not including the cost of windows).

So at these costs with 100 clients ($3008 x 100)+server= $303,789 PER YEAR!
$1,518,945 over 5 years!(not including the initial software cost)
But the IDC reports only show the cost for servers NOT clients.

A simple way to put it is: it costs $23Bn more than MS made(revenue not 
profit) in 2003 in the damage caused by viruses for windows.
Push that in your next conversation when someone menthions TCO.
(mention that IDC decided not to do any more reports for MS after this 
one, & that IDC was sponsored by MS to do this report)

Also I think that this points to another thing, that MS is more of a 
drain on the economy from its bad software than it is a contributor.