As director of IT at Qualcomm, Matthew Clark was part of the team that reviewed the Linux option. The company's ratio of administrators to users is currently 500-to-1 (although he plans to lower that to about 450-to-1). "With Linux, it would have been 150- or 175-to-1. We would have had to hire three additional administrators for every administrator we have right now working on Unix," he says.

Iams isn't surprised to hear that assessment. "That's traditionally been one of Sun's strong points," he says. "They've optimized their systems for that metric."

Clark acknowledges that the administrative tools have improved since Qualcomm last reviewed its Linux options, but he still thinks Linux would be more costly. "If we started today with the new [tools] coming out, we might be in the neighborhood of two [admins] for every one," he says.

Although the numbers didn't add up for Linux as a Solaris replacement, Clark said he's impressed with Linux's overall capabilities and believes the operating system will continue to have a place at Qualcomm. "We like the performance, and we recognize that throwing a whole bunch of little boxes at things can work really well in certain applications," he says.

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