Linux total cost of operation 40 percent lower than Windows

The report comes after two years of Microsoft-sponsored research heralding the benefits of Windows over Linux, although IBM denied it is a direct response.

The overall finding was that Linux was 40 percent less expensive than a comparable Windows system and 54 percent less than Solaris, based on a three-year period of ownership for a system supporting 100,000 operations per second on the SPECjbb benchmark. The research was based on in-depth interviews with IT executives from more than 20 medium and large enterprises - all with more than 250 employees - in industries such as education, entertainment, finance, government and retail.