|
The mantra most often invoked by those who buy into the myth of Linux instability is its development. And the most oft-cited portion of this argument against open-source software and, by extension, Linux is the lack of responsibility by a single entity--the old "inability to have defects resolved and to obtain support" saw.
Many open-source software projects are released under the GPL (General Public License) or LGPL (Lesser General Public License) for personal use but require royalties and/or licensing fees for corporate and commercial use, and in return provide technical support and defect resolution. This puts the most popular and commonly used open-source applications--Apache, AXIS, JBoss, Jetty, MySQL, Saxon and Tomcat--on the same playing field as commercial applications. Someone is responsible for the software, and you can get support.
Of course, consider the source. If you download "Tom's Cool Linux GPL Application" from a personal Web site, that's no different from downloading "Mary's Shareware Windows Application" and then attempting to get support for it. We all like free stuff, but as with any application--commercial or open-source--it's your job to make sure you can get the service and support your organization needs.
As with hardware, it's likely that open-source software lives in commercial products deployed within your organization. When a product needs a Web interface for management or user interaction, for example, it often ships with Apache/Tomcat, JBoss or Jetty--all open-source projects that prove not only that open-source development is viable, but that it works well enough for companies like Hewlett-Packard, Intel and IBM to back the OSDL, where open-source innovations are encouraged and released into your waiting hands.
A number of enterprises have found success. FedEx Corp. and Google run their entire infrastructures on Linux. Amazon.com, Computer Associates, Disney, DreamWorks, L.L. Bean, Pixar, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney also rely on Linux for day-to-day operations, while Shaw's Supermarkets and Supervalu are 100 percent Linux today. And let's not forget that the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracked Hurricane Isabel on Linux-based systems. Life-and-death decisions are made based on information from applications running on Linux.
If you need your own empirical evidence of Linux's stability, we suggest deploying it where redundancy is required--firewalls, DNS, Web servers and file/print sharing.
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?
