[Opensource] OT: Total cost of ownership

[Geeta Ramani]

Hi everyone:

First, I'd like apologize for posting this off-topic question, and if people
would prefer to respond to me off-list, that would be fine with me - thanks in
advance for any and all answers!

The company I work with has recently merged into a larger company.  One result
of this merger (of five smaller companies) is that many of my original
company's technological decisions are now being questioned, or at least being
looked into.  One such decision is a debate over whether to stay the course
with Java/J2EE or to go over to .NET.  I have been put in a committee (with the
grandiose title of "Web technology assesssment committee") to look into
this.  I have been actively trying to argue the case for Java and in fact in
the interim report that we submitted, five of the seven people in the committee
have voted for going with J2EE (while only one said we should go .NET and the
other suggested the use of both).  I had assumed that this would therefore
persuade management to what I consider is the sane point of view, but
apparantly there are people in the managerial circles who I believe are behind
the scenes trying to put forth the idea that .net is the better way to go.  One
argument that i hear is favoured is that "Total cost of ownership" is lower in
the .net case..  I have tried many many times to show the advantages (both
monetary and otherwise) of open source, (as well as the disadvantages of
clamping ourselves to one vendor) but rather than see the advantages of OS,
management seems to want to look into the "maybe costs" and the "hidden costs"
(which don't seem to be articulated enough, in my opinion) and I believe they
(maybe honestly) think that open source and free products "cannot" be
true..(the old "nothing in life is free" argument -yaaawwn..)

So my question is this: does anybody here have any kind of "Total cost of
ownership" figures (for .net vs. a j2ee solution like linux/apache/expresso or
linux/apache/jboss) that I can bring to management's attention?  I have
searched the web with not much success - most of the searches yield results in
particular categories (like operating system Linux vs. Windows etc.)  Also, it
has been suggested that training costs for J2EE are prohibitive (another factor
in the TCO argument)..  Of course not really knowing much about the M$ world
doesn't help me here - for example, is it really easier/cheaper to learn .net
than it is j2ee?  Also, we hear a lot about Microsoft "clamping down" on
security with their new MS2003 server - basing their approach apparantly on
Apache's model of "allow nothing except what you absolutely have to". Is this
credible?

If anybody has links or stories, which are not inherantly biased (so nothing
from microsoft.com or sun.com may be appropriate!!), please share them with
me:  I would really appreciate it..:)

Thank you very much for your time,
Geeta