Under the terms of the UnitedLinux agreement, all four partners will contribute to the development of the technology, bundle it with their own value-add and flog it to partners under their own brand.
Consortium partners and hardware and software vendors supporting the unified solution are touting UnitedLinux as something that will be at the forefront of Linux adoption over the next 12-24 months, but principal analyst for hardware platforms at Gartner, Matthew Boon, believes unification alone is not a reason enough to do that.
Boon described the uptake of Linux as -still fairly limited" in Australia. In a survey of 900 companies in the Australia/New Zealand region this year, 12 percent had servers installed running Linux. Describing that at -pretty high", Boon added however that it was questionable how many of those businesses were using Linux for core applications.
"Primarily it's still being used for things such as e-mail servers and caching servers," Boon said. "Worldwide we have seen Linux sales continue to jump quite significantly from a revenue perspective, but that's still coming from a relatively small base," he added.
According to Boon, a single Linux distribution could well solidify the independent software vendors (ISVs), therefore the number of applications will increase. -That's when you'll see it drive e-business," he said. -What will drive or not drive Linux is not a unified solution but the number of applications available around Linux, and corporations' belief that service and support is there to ensure businesses can still run efficiently."
Boon pointed to the fact that Red Hat was missing from the equation as another indicator that UnitedLinux will not drive the up-take of the OS in the Australian marketplace.
The four individual partners that make up the UnitedLinux consortium are not as strong in Australia as Red Hat, Boon explained, and they all have their own agendas. He described that as -fairly significant", saying, -clearly when key players don't get involved it could fall apart".
Keiran O'Shaughnessy, Caldera's general manager, Australia and New Zealand, described UnitedLinux as not -anti-Red Hat per sae".
"Red Hat has been invited to join and has expressed an interest in being involved at some point," O'Shaughnessy added. -Today is just the starting point, the initiative is open to all Linux distributors that have a focus on the business market."
Fears of fragmentation aside
O'Shaughnessy described UnifiedLinux as a -very compelling technology for adoption" by the Australian business user. -It brings a standardised high-quality Linux solution built especially by Linux companies, and gives Linux users peace of mind and security knowing it's backed by major hardware and software vendors."
One of the biggest things that hamstrung UNIX, according to O'Shaughnessy, was fragmentation of the product. -For technology to really gather momentum there needs to be commonality," he said. Of further concern to Linux users is the fact that it's expensive to certify many different flavours of the OS.
O'Shaughnessy sees the take-up of Linux continuing to accelerate in general over the next 12-24 months, with "UnitedLinux very much at the forefront of the take-up of that technology" and something that will -speed up the adoption of Linux as a mainstream enterprise technology".
"To get four Linux companies together is in itself a huge job," he said, adding that Caldera was now working to get partners on board to support UnitedLinux. IBM and the new HP are locally involved in endorsing the initiative, announcing support for it across Intel-compatible platforms. -That's the sort of support we're enlisting from our partners," O'Shaughnessy added.
Stephen Bovis, the new HP's Australian manager of enterprise products, said Linux delivers improved time to market for business applications and reduces IT costs. -From a growth point of view it is certainly the fastest growing operating system. We further see [UnitedLinux] accelerating the take-up of Linux."
Bovis agreed with Gartner's Boon that one of the challenges Linux faces is the end-to-end support for the solution, and believes the collaboration of industry partners plus platform suppliers will lead business customers to rethink that.
IBM's Linux manager for Australia and New Zealand, Geoff Lawrence, sees the unified proposal as being good news for the Australian business customer. -From my perspective I think it's undoubtedly good news for our customers but also for the software industry and for the operating system industry as a whole," he said.
From a customer's point of view, he said, it would simplify the job of selecting which Linux solution to go with and give them greater confidence that it wouldn't fragment in much the same way as UNIX did previously.
Whilst IBM encourages its customers to embrace Linux, Lawrence said the company remained agnostic in its support for its four different Linux distributors, Red Hat, Caldera, SuSe and TurboLinux. -The support going forward will be for UnitedLinux and Red Hat," Lawrence said, adding that IBM will remain agnostic.
Gartner's Boon said the consolitation of the Linux playing field was the same as that seen in the market in general. -Business as such is not enough to sustain all these [Linux distributors]," he said. However, -without a key player like Red Hat you've got to question the long-term viability of the whole arrangement," he added.
This is good news for application developers.