Even before last month's attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the world's economies were teetering on the brink of a recession. In this climate, companies are naturally reluctant to spend any more money on IT than is absolutely necessary. Many enterprises still have some room for growth thanks to spare capacity following year 2000 expenditure, but there will still be a need for new investment in IT systems.
Such investment in technology will often be driven by the possibility of savings. The need to reduce operating costs in difficult economic times is paramount, and if an IT vendor can demonstrate that its technology will deliver not only a real cost saving to the business, but also a quick return on investment, then the argument for spending will be very persuasive.
Licensing changes
The economy is just one reason why firms are likely to pay closer attention to IT expenditure. Microsoft's recent changes to Windows licensing, which replaces volume discounts with a scheme that only gives reduced rates to firms that regularly upgrade their software, means that companies will probably re-examine their policy on Microsoft products. Analyst firm Gartner's recent advice to drop Microsoft IIS may also be a factor.
Linux systems may have a growing cost advantage over proprietary solutions, including proprietary Unix systems, as delegates noted at the recent LinuxWorld conference and exhibition in San Francisco.
IBM shows a growing commitment to Linux and argues that Linux has another benefit for corporates: in the same way that the availability of MS-DOS across a wide range of hardware gave application developers a larger market, Linux can bring a similar advantage. IBM recently held a seminar for application developers in the UK, where it stressed the potential for developing applications once and then using them for a growing range of systems. For example, with the formal arrival of Linux on the venerable AS/400 server  or iSeries as it is now called  IBM now has Linux as the single common operating environment across its entire server range.
Some executives at IBM even argue that Linux could switch from a second choice among its customers, after Windows, AIX and z/OS, to being the strategic first option, though they predict this will not happen for at least five years. They also acknowledge that proprietary systems will always incorporate additional functionality that some users will require.
More importantly, IBM is pitching Linux as the best environment for enterprises that need to move applications across the business. That movement of applications can be both upwards, as business units expand, or downwards as applications disseminate from the centre.
IBM is also promoting Linux for the consolidation of large server farms, and in particular Unix-based farms. According to Andy Hoiles, IBM's Linux business manager for northern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, some companies are already replacing Sun Microsystems servers with Linux machines, and Sun users are now an obvious target market for IBM.
The IBM offering here is the zSeries mainframe running Linux in a large number of logical partitions. Though the server itself is a relatively expensive piece of kit, the number of partitions it supports can make it more economical than a server farm when it comes to total cost of ownership, argued Hoiles. For example, an IBM Freeway mainframe has a theoretical limit of around 98,000 individual logical Linux partitions, and each one could represent an individual server in a server farm.
Corporate applications
For some time yet, many corporate IT managers may still regard Linux as a toy for technologists, but Linux is already a major part of enterprise IT systems, especially in the area of Web services, Hoiles said.
A common complaint is that Linux lags behind other operating systems in terms of corporate applications, but Hoiles pointed out that there are now more than 2,500 business applications in the IBM Web Global Solutions Directory  see Web address below  in addition to ported implementations of IBM's own software products, DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli and Lotus Domino. Hoiles acknowledged that the cost of porting applications to Linux may be a problem for some firms, but emphasised that the number of available applications is increasing.
Companies have been concerned that support services for Linux are not as extensive as those for other operating systems. However, IBM users can now obtain exactly the same support contracts for their systems regardless of the operating system selected  though IBM has not said whether support for Linux is cheaper than for a Z/OS-equipped system.
And the Linux community emphasises that by using the Internet and email, companies can get into direct contact with the programmers developing Linux applications  and this may be a much better support option than many proprietary system support contracts, in terms of the speed and quality of support, and costs.
So, the economic slowdown and the need for firms to make savings could help Linux to finally break through into the enterprise mainstream.
The downturn has at least won one organisation over to Linux, my employer.