You're thinking about your own app servers. No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it.
Re:The End of Windows
by JumpCrisscross on Monday April 02, 2018 @11:17AM
(#16735216)
> No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it
This is a small and shrinking corner of the market. Valuable. But still a corner.
It may be shrinking, but it isn't small.
> the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux
They haven't really up until now have they? MS licenses are not a big part of the IT budget compared to the people needed to run an in-house data center (typically staffed 24x7)
This is where Microsoft is going with Azure. Compared to other platforms, setting up a local instance of Azure is pretty painless and allows you to spin up resources locally that are identical to the Cloud.
And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.