SMB

Another issue is the SMB (Small and Medium Business) area. The Fortune 1000 companies are pretty well saturated with software and have large IT departments to handle the software. But small (<50) and medium (<500) businesses usually cannot support a staff to handle software. Thus it is important to have software with a low-overhead in terms of staff, cost, and time.

There is a battle for mindshare about the subject of TCO (``Total Cost of Ownership'') which includes everything about computers (staff, space, hardware, software, licensing, training, wiring, upgrades, etc). Microsoft, quite correctly, claims that the cost of the software is a very small portion of the total cost of TCO. Thus it should not matter if the software if free. What they fail to mention is that Microsoft software costs more in terms of staff training, desktop and website downtime, licensing, etc. Much ink is being wasted to convince SMBs that Microsoft is cheaper and more reliable than Linux. It's not true but that has never stopped the marketing machine.