The popularity of the Linux server operating system is predicted to grow, with a recent report from the Butler Group estimating that it will be the major server operating system by 2009.
Matthew Boon, principal analyst of hardware platforms at industry analyst Gartner Asia Pacific, said at the moment, it was typically seeing a lot of businesses experimenting with Linux--testing applications, and assessing how reliable it was using it in specific areas. "Getting an idea of just what the capabilities of the operating system are," Boon said.
However, Boon said these businesses were still using Linux primarily at the edge of the network, for example caching servers, and for firewalls.
But he believes that business-level managers are starting to express a more genuine interest in Linux. "[We're] certainly seeing organisations talking to vendors more about how to use Linux across wider areas of the whole enterprise," Boon said.
He agrees that one of the reasons organisations may look at Linux as an alternative to mainstream operating systems is issues such as licensing costs.
In a recent IT Manager channel poll, some of the respondents commented that they were looking at implementing Linux because of software licensing costs.
Other respondents said that the greater flexibility and a larger community to nut out problems were factors they had taken into account when assessing the possible use of Linux.
In relation to getting business buy-in from senior executives, one respondent said that it was a technical issue, not a business issue. "One must still produce a business case to show the value of changing," he said. "But the final decision lies with the CIO [or] IT manager, not the business exec[utive]."
"Business execs decide on applications and functionality, not infrastructure. Infrastructure is the domain of the CIO/IT manager."
Robert Milne, MIS manager at manufacturing company Krone Australia, said Linux was certainly seen as an emerging technology for the organisation. "Our main business server applications run on Unix, so we have Unix familiarisation," Milne said. "The rest of our servers are Windows NT or Windows 2000 based."
Milne said that it's interest in Linux had, in part, been driven by the cost of software licences.
Stability and reliability were other reasons Milne said it was assessing Linux. "In the open source Linux Unix world there seems to be quite a wealth of updates available," he said. "We can fix it ourselves or go out to a wide wealth of resources around the world."
Likewise, Milne liked the flexibility of being able to use toolsets to develop some applications in house, such as scheduling tools. He contrasted this to the Windows environment, where he would have to go out and buy the individual pieces. "We have the flexibility to move fast as the business needs determine," Milne said.
Gartner's Boon sees Linux starting to deployed across wider areas within companies within the next 24 months. He believes as we start to see more applications become available we will start to see Linux more heavily deployed.
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We've dropped Windows right out of our setup. Glad to say that we're an 'all-UNIX' shop with also FreeBSD and Solaris on various [ compile ] servers.