News 

If ever the burgeoning Linux camp needed proof that Microsoft views the platform as a competitive threat, here it is. Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' page cites research from the likes of IDC as well as case studies from Safeway, Samsung, Yahoo and HP among others to back up its claims.

Microsoft told us: 'The purpose of this advertising campaign is to provide customers with a resource to obtain hard, evaluative data to help make value-based IT decisions. These studies are meant to be another data point in the customer's buying decisions for IT.'

The publicity campaign will run for six months in the US IT trade media with adverts pushing readers to the 'Get the Facts' site. Microsoft described the launch material as 'the initial phase of a long-term program, that we hope to expand.'

The motivation behind the campaign is about protecting Microsoft's growing share of the server market by doing its utmost to ensure that defectors from market leader

IDC's Q3 figures for global server shipments show that both Windows and Linux are chipping away at Unix, with revenues up to $3.1bn and $610mn respectively. But it is Linux showing the growth spurt, up 42 per cent sequentially to Microsoft's 21.7 per cent jump in terms of units shipped.

The highlighted IDC study of Microsoft's campaign shows staffing expenses and training costs as 33.5 per cent and 32.3 per cent 'better', using data from as recent as 2002. It finds that for four of the five 'workloads' tested, Windows works out cheaper, with the exception of Web serving.

However, while IDC commends Microsoft on the quality of its support tools, it has its own caveats on any dismissal of Linux. 'The gap in support costs between Linux and Windows will contract. Additionally, as Linux matures and more packaged software becomes available in the Linux server market, IT professionals will become more skilled in the efficient installation, deployment, and maintenance of Linux server environments. IDC's system management research suggests that system management tool vendors are proactively moving to support Linux,' it reads.

And for that lone Web serving task which still finds in Linux's favour, Microsoft follows up with Meta Group's findings that 'WinTel Web servers perform better' than the rather specific set up of 'a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.'