Technical-support concerns are also a sticking point. It will ease your troubled minds to know that Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Red Hat, among others, offer 24x7 support for Linux, with Hewlett-Packard and IBM supporting Red Hat and SuSE, the leading contenders for enterprise use. If the need to have help just a phone call away is holding you back, take a gander at our Linux support services Buyer's Guide and our review of distribution-neutral services, "TEAMwork Pays Off for Linux".
As for the perceived lack of data-center application that run on LInux, this is largely a result of ineffective marketing by software vendors. In "Where To Find a Fit", we'll give these vendors a hand by calling out both commercial and open-source data-center offerings.
Back when Windows NT was gearing up in the mid-'90s, analysts predicted it would take hold in the enterprise based on the availability of some 1,200 commercial applications for the fledgling server platform. Compare that with the more than 4,500 commercial applications available for Linux today, according to a recent IBM survey. Not even non-Euclidian math can equate 4,500 to a lack of application availability.
Those who worry about SCO's efforts to charge licensing fees for Linux can find comfort in indemnification programs and defense funds established by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Novell and the Open Source Development Labs, among others. We think companies shouldn't let SCO's claims deter them (see "Don't Be Chilled by Linux Lawsuits,"). In fact, if we used SCO software, we'd worry that the $9 million Gartner estimates the company will spend pursuing lawsuits against Linux users and vendors--with uncertain returns--could well weaken SCO and jeopardize the future of its own products.
As we went to press, SCO had responded to the Utah U.S. District Court's Dec. 5 order requiring the company to clarify its allegations against IBM, but details of the information contained in the SCO response had not been disclosed (see more on this subject in "Industry Insights").
A surprisingly high number of respondents to our survey--36 percent--cited stability/maturity as a reason for not deploying Linux. That gave us a chuckle because it's likely that Linux is already running in many of their infrastructures, albeit undercover. That's because most appliances that perform DNS, firewall, proxy and content-switching tasks run on Linux.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
