Microsoft's "Get the Facts" (tm) Campaign, Deconstructed

It's been some time now since Microsoft launched their Get the Facts campaign to "get" the "facts" out about Microsoft vs Linux. It's certainly been a helpful resource for me, as a great source of research reports and results from third-party research firms.

If you just go and read the white paper/research report summaries that Microsoft publishes, you'd have to think things are not going too well for Linux and other open source projects. Microsoft groups their reports into categories like total cost of ownership, reliability, security, performance, and so on. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, I found this article, Info-Tech Research Group: 2005 Information Technology Priorities listed under "Small and Medium Sized Business". Originally published in March, 2005 (the survey was conducted in January 2005), here are the actual summary bullet items, and I quote:

• Microsoft dominates the mid-sized marketplace. With 75 percent penetration for Windows and 65 percent penetration for Windows Server 2003, Microsoft is the clear winner for mid-sized companies.
• Most mid-sized enterprises are simply not interested in Linux. Forty-eight percent of survey respondents indicated that they are not interested in Linux, and another 15 percent are not sure. Only 10 percent plan to evaluate Linux within the next three years.
• Only 27 percent of mid-sized companies currently have Linux installed.
• For smaller organizations, adding Linux to the mix can create complexity and add headcount and overhead.

What to make of these claims? If you actually think about the numbers, and not the words, it doesn't sound all that bad for Linux. I went to the actual document (link to PDF file here) and read it all in context, where the words make it sound bad, but the numbers are encouraging. Here's my interpretation:

• Microsoft continues to dominate the mid-sized marketplace, but with only 75% running Windows XP and only 65% running Windows Server 2003, one can only wonder what the other 25%/35% are using.
• Most mid-sized enterprises are starting to show an interest in Linux; more than half (52%) indicated some degree of curiosity about Linux, with 10% having firm plans to evaluate Linux in the next three years.
• More than a quarter (27%) of mid-sized companies currently have Linux installed. And while the smaller mid-sized companies are lagging (still close to one quarter, at 23%), over one third (35%) of larger mid-sized have already deployed Linux.
• Smaller organizations may have to make some tough choices about their software, because they can not afford to hire/retrain as many staffers as larger organizations (duh).

The research is about 2.5 years old, so it would be interesting to know whether Microsoft has been able to further ward off Linux depredations on the server market.

Anyway, I just love looking at these reports and finding the nuggest of pure gold Linux propaganda hidden inside the Microsoft-sponsored research. Check back here for more--I plan to keep doing these from time to time, as my time permits.