The overall costs of a Linux workstation are higher, ME Bank experts explain

May 1, 2013 09:23 GMT  ·  By

Members Equity Bank is one of the companies that decided to pick Windows over Linux, explaining that the final costs of an open-source operating system would be a lot higher.

The Australian bank decided to deploy Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012, both of which can replace Linux-based alternatives that could cost AU$100,000 (€103,000 / €78,700) more.

“Although the alternative Linux-based platform is essentially free to deploy, based on our past experience, we knew that it would cost more to support than Windows. This made the overall costs of the two operating systems approximately the same,” ME Bank's IT expert Jem Richards was quoted as saying by ZDNet.

Tech support and staff training are currently dubbed pretty expensive for Linux-based workstations, while a Microsoft license would require no additional investments for approximately five years, he estimated.