Choice of operating system - Case Study Example

Starting with Windows NT Build 1 and Windows 3.1, it has now progressed to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition and Windows NT Build 6. The decision to use and adhere to Microsoft operating systems, whether on the corporate network or individual, non-networked computers, was largely predicated on the fact that the popularity of the product implied that the majority of software manufacturers designed their own products for compatibility with Microsoft. In other words, the decision was not one which was consciously made by the ICT department on the basis of the quality superiority, or cost effectiveness, of the operating systems in question but was imposed upon it by Microsoft's domination of the market.

The advent of the Internet and the company's subsequent adoption of e-business and e-commerce tools, not to mention increased office automation and computerization, necessitated the purchase and operation of a mainframe server. Again, choice of mainframe operating systems was determined by the range of third-party products available. Microsoft proved its dominance once again, leading to the adoption of Windows Server 2000. At present, the mainframe OS is Windows Server 2003 R2. At the present time, the company has 56 laptops and PC's running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, 104 netwo.

3 Evaluation of Windows OSWindows operating systems are hardly the optimal choice for any organization. Tanenbaum (2001) and Tanenbaum and Woodhull (2006) explain that no operating systems have as much security vulnerabilities as do Windows OS's. Security vulnerabilities, a significant problem in themselves, are only complicated by the fact that Microsoft releases far fewer patches than required. Compounded by the widespread popular use of Windows OS's, security is a significant problem as hackers are, seemingly, singularly evoted to compromising systems which run a Windows OS (Tanenbaum, 2001; Tanenbaum and Woodhull, 2006).

Not only are Windows operating systems replete with security vulnerabilities but, they are also costly. The implementation of a Windows operating system together with the related security software, costs organizations several thousand dollars, often running into high four or, possibly, five figure sums (Silberschatz et al., 2004). It is, in comparison to Linux OS, extremely costly. Furthermore, consequent to its domination of the market, largely evidenced in the fact that the majority of third-party software is designed for operation in a Windows environment, Microsoft is engaged in the continued increasing of OS prices, rather than their decrease, as per market demand (Silberschatz et al., 2004). The ICT Director confirmed the academic literature findings cited in the preceding, conceding that Windows operating systems were often a security "nightmare" and, in comparison to other OS's, quite costly.

Mac OS X and Linux were, in his opinion, much better than Windows. Their security vulnerabilities were