Last updated: June 4, 2005

About This Site

The chart below includes vendors that offer unique, contemporary network operating systems built for the enterprise server market. Although the list is incomplete, it should provide an excellent starting point for detailed comparisons of subscription-based technical support and licensing options offered by various vendors. Special pricing schemes for educational and federal institutions are nearly always available as well, even if information to that effect is not specifically included in the chart.

A Few Notes

Some vendors do not publish prices and licensing options on their respective web sites, which makes research unnecessarily difficult. To be fair, some vendors (most notably IBM) offer such a myriad of custom solutions it would be unwieldy to attempt to nail down a pricing structure. I found Red Hat's plan to be the simplest, and also very accessible and well-documented. On the other hand, the simplest licensing or support model doesn't necessarily fit your organization. Mandriva's PSMP program offers organizations more options than Red Hat, and they present their data in a format that is far more accessible than Novell's approach, which lumps everything together and then forces users to download a ZIP file when they finally find the relevant price sheet. Apple deserves recognition not only for their quality server products, but also for their site's extremely organized body of information for the server market. Regrettably, SCO's site offers almost no real data upon which to base an opinion.

For considerations regarding Free and open source solutions, I refer you to the FDIC's excellent analysis, Risk Management of Free and Open Source Software.

Network Server Pricing/Licensing Comparison Chart

Vendor	Operating System Product Family	Operating System Product Pricing	Licensing Options	Special Licensing Pricing	Support Options and Pricing	Server Hardware
Apple Computer, Inc.	Mac OS X Server	The Apple Store - Software	Contact vendor	Apple Volume Licensing	Apple Maintenance Program Mac OS X Server Software Support	Apple Servers The Apple Store
HP/COMPAQ Computer Corporation	HP-UX	Contact vendor for pricing, or use the online configurator			Operating System Services Software Support Services	HP Servers or Third-party
	OpenVMS
	Tru64 UNIX 1
IBM Corporation	AIX 5L	Contact vendor	Contact vendor		Integrated Technology Services IT Maintenance Services	IBM Servers
	OS/2 Warp Server	Contact vendor or locate IBM Software Partner
	OS/400	Contact vendor
Mandriva	Mandriva Linux Corporate Server	Mandriva Store - Professional Solutions	PSMP: Personalized Solutions and Maintenance Program Mandriva Corporate Club		Support Scope of the Corporate Server	Third-party Hardware Compatibility Database
Microsoft Corporation	Windows Server 2003 2	Estimated Retail Pricing	Volume Licensing Program		Assisted Support Options	Third-party
Novell, Inc.	NetWare 3	VLA Price List Excerpt	Novell Program Comparison	Product Availability and Price Lists	Customer Support Options	Third-party
	SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 3	VLA Price List Excerpt
Red Hat, Inc.	Red Hat Enterprise Linux	Support Options and Pricing Education Pricing				Third-party
The SCO Group, Inc.	SCO OpenServer	Contact vendor				Third-party
	UnixWare
Sun Microsystems, Inc.	Solaris OS 4	Sun Store U.S.	Licensing Information	Corporate Licensing Education/Research Licensing 4	Software Support Services	Sun Servers or Third-party
Turbolinux, Inc.	Turbolinux Server	SONinc.com (official distributor)	Contact vendor		Online Support Ticket System No enterprise-level support available from vendor.	Third-party

1. Formerly known as Digital UNIX (and as OSF/1 prior to that)
2. Earlier incarnations of this product line include the Windows 2000 and Windows NT Server product families
3. Novell Open Enterprise Server is a hybrid of technologies from both SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server and NetWare
4. Formerly known as SunOS
5. Tiered education/research price list may be outdated