Because that organisation may not have much in the way of Linux knowledgefor the setup/management/programming of the HPC cluster in-house while they have a wealth of MS experience. Microsoft has created a number of programming APIs for their HPC product that can just be called in .NET to extend existing software or to create new tools where staff members are already familiar with Microsoft programming tools/methodologies.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc853440(VS.85).aspx

In short it is a Microsoft solution to the problem written for organisations that use their platform for everything else and that makes it compelling for a variety of reasons - not the least of which being interoperability with the existing infrastrucutre and managability by the existing staff.

One of the big developments of late has been in data mining of the data from your ERP system / data warehouse to answer questions about your clients/business and to find interesting patterns in your data. Couple this with the fact that buisinesses are trying to retain more and more data in a live database to make this data mining more deep/interesting and the needs for massive database servers with the power to run some crazy complex queries/reports is on the rise.

The popular example of this sort of thing in Wal-Mart who retain everything in an electronic form and can do scary things like see pictures of you based on correlating their digital security footage with your credit card purchase at a point in time at a particular register or track the differences in sales of individual products during unusual events like Hurricanes etc.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/14/2057228

Many businesses run Microsoft SQL Server as the backend for their ERP system and/or as their primary database. This would allow them to build a nice little HPC system to do the sorts of scary things with massive amounts of data that they have been wanting to do. I end with this funny cartoon on the subject.
http://onefte.com/2010/09/21/target-markets/
 

What you are talking about is ACLs. Group Policies are made up of thousands of windows and application settings that are applied to computers and users on login that configure and/or restrict their environment in a multitude of ways. See here for details - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742376.aspx

+1 This

95% of the industry is using Windows and Exchange/Outlook. All of the peers that your management will run into use them. All of the vendors that provide possible software or tools for your industry expect you to have them. Also, if you can't properly and easily manage Windows 7, with all of the great management tools and Group Policies that are available and information online and from Microsoft Press, it is a failing on your part as it is a great OS and I've had a great experience with it in a very large company (~2500 desktops).

If you do this, I can guarantee they will be sold on or want to do something and then you'll have to tell them that it can't work in your environment. They may want to hire somebody and have a hard time finding a person with the requisite Linux experience and/or will have to pay a fortune compared to the army of people with MS experience. A customer or vendor will expect to interact with them via Office 2010 documents and it won't work right. Every new employee will stare at the PC with a strange look and say "this is different from what I know." They will ask why. You'll say it was because of your decision to switch to Linux to save a pittance on licensing. They'll reply that none of their peers at other companies have done the same thing so why did we do that again? It will be your fault. Over and over again. Forever.

At the very least, you need to quantify in your business case all of the flexibility that you are taking away of any future IT decision by dumping the Microsoft OS ecosystem so everybody understands that from the beginning and can't pretend like they didn't later.

People really don't get fired for choosing Microsoft - especially on the desktop. At the end of the day it is the industry standard and "best practice" and since everybody else does it they can't point at you in the event anything goes wrong and make out like you did something crazy/stupid choosing it which makes you grossly negligent in your job.

I've been looking for a good, detailed and high def video of the interface and finally found one.

The phone is in Italian but the review is in English. It really showcases the interface quite a bit when it isn't playing a questionable soundtrack...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvRNcYyx1E

I went through a steady stream of these - some with integrated DSL some without - Linksys, DLink, Netgear etc. They all had stability and speed issues or other niggly little things that required reboots and firmware updates. Finally I broke down and bought a Cisco 857W which is a real Cisco device running IOS including DSL, Wireless, Statefull Firewall and IPSEC VPN. I was studying for my CCNA so it was a good device to learn on and was how I justified the purchase to the Mrs.

It might cost AU$450 and have a pretty masstive learning curve to configure it properly but man is it solid and a great performer. It has an uptime currently of over six months with only 2 DSL activations (ie it has only had to reconnect to my ISP once in six months) and I do quite a bit of bittorrenting via wireless with hundreds of connections and with the firewall on getting over 16MBit/sec out of my ADSL2+ link.

There is a reason that you see them or their more expensive 877 cousins provided with the business links - because the telcos know they work and are stable as hell and will result in greater uptime and fewer support calls making the cost worth it.

Cisco may be overpriced, especially with it only being 802.11g, but you also get what you pay for. I'll never go back to the SOHO kit for my home.

Just upgrade the machines from XP to 7. 7 not only includes sysprep (the tool to give you that initial setup wizard to make each PC unique as far as SIDs etc) on every machine in c:\windows\system32\sysprep but they have re-written the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) since XP so that it is really good at re-detecting hardware differences on boot. You couple that with the fact that it also now installs every driver from the install DVD on the PC (along with all other install options) it means that you can do the following:
1.) Get a machine just the way you want it
2.) Run sysprep with the generalise option
3.) Clonezilla it
4.) Install that image on any piece of equipment forever more

I have taken images this way on desktops and used them on laptops and vice versa. It seriously just has the drivers for 90% of the hardware involved and I install a driver or two here and there when I need to after the rebuild when it doesn't.

So the answer isn't go to Linux or virtualise things - it is just update to the current version of Windows.

I recently installed Fedora 12 onto my Dell Mini 10v replacing the 7 starter that was preloaded. While the OS generally feels snappier than 7 did, the default Firefox was just soo slow to launch - it literally took ~10 seconds. Per a friend's suggestion, I got Chrome and it launches instantly and just feels faster once it is open. I havn't used Firefox since.

I don't know what has happened with Firefox but the difference between it and Chrome on a netbook is night and day...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

Just replace blades with cores...

I've found HP's ProCurve Switches to be great with a lifetime warranty and free software updates compared to the Cisco equivilents which need SmartNet (maybe smart on Cisco's part) and cost 2-3 times as much.

However with alot of my clients rolling out the Cisco Voice solutions the idea usually is they standardize on all Cisco kit including the switches. I wonder if this is HP's play to get into the IP telephony market (which 3Com's website indicates they are in) to complete their offerings so a buisiness will go all-HP in a similar fashion?

Microsoft is one step ahead of you - price for Server 2008 R2 Foundation is ~$150 (only available OEM bundled with cheap new servers from Dell and HP) and is limited to 15 users/logins and has no CALs. Otherwise it is full Server 2008 with all the trimmings.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/foundation.aspx

Granted, if you go over that many users in AD it turns itself off apparently - but 15 users would cover the sort of office that would be going with this. Or a desktop running Linux. Somebody at Microsoft was thinking and wanted to protect their market in the lower end.

You know there are alternatives when MS makes Server 2008 R2 avail for 15% it's normal price for =15 user shops...

Unless you are in the military - where you always wear the same color/outfit, weight and how much you carry needs to be kept at a minimum as well as there being a great need to commicate and for others to know where you are. This actually goes along with the Star Trek analogy a bit too because they were, arguably, military personnel.

But there is no money in selling things to the miltary right?

You are right about small buisiness not needing a dedicated full-time admin but are missing the most widely-used alternative - outsoursing the IT operations to a specialist. My company provides support for small to medium sized buisinesses. We come in and build the server and desktops and set up the whole environment and then provide ongoing support for it including 24/7 helpdesk who have remote access/control of the desktops, SCOM monitoring to alert us to issues, and onsite service whenever they require it all at an hourly rate. They only tend to use 1-2 hours a week at most once things are running and all-up it works out to much much less than a fulltime admin.

For what it is worth, one of the buisinesses that I have been looking after introduced a few Macs into their SBS 2008 environment for their artists recently - I joined them to AD and am using Entourage 2008 to connect to their Exchange server. Most of the calls I get are not about the PCs, which we have running great, but the Macs which seem to have all kinds of issues relating to dropping network share drives and Entourage playing up. Granted it can be argued the issue is with the Macs interacting with the MS environment, in some cases using MS tools, but their SBS server is not going anywhere and the Mac really needs to play better in what is really an MS world to acheive inroads in the enterprise. Particularly when I could have gotten them an HP workstation-class PC running the same Creative Suite for nearly 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of those Mac Pros...