Architectures requiring high availability and redundancy will show the highest ROI when deployed on Linux. Clustering has been, and still is, the biggest advantage of Linux over its competitors in terms of price-performance. For an example of a clustered deployment, see "Linux on the Inside Track". If you don't want the fun (or hassle, depending on your point of view) of building your own Beowulf, there are plenty of commercial products that will assist you in rolling your own cluster for myriad purposes--Web farms, image and document processing, distributed computing and, more recently, grid computing. Indeed, Linux is likely to dominate clustering within two to three years because of price-performance advantages in the 15- to 20-times range, according to Aberdeen Group.
Linux also excels as a file-and-print server. Among its capabilities for meeting disparate needs are support for AppleTalk, Samba (Microsoft CIFS), Novell NetWare and NFS. In the print-server arena, Hewlett-Packard continues to support an open-source project to further the development of HP printer drivers for Linux. It's rare to find a printer not supported on Linux, and if the printer is an HP model, it's almost always supported natively under Linux with all requisite functionality. USB, parallel, JetDirect, IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) and Samba printing are handily supported by CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), which is becoming the de facto standard in Linux for easy implementation of print sharing across networks. Although the free version of CUPS may not be for everyone, the commercial version sports drivers for just about any printer you can think of, and plays well in heterogeneous environments.
We couldn't very well talk about Linux without mentioning its use on the desktop. The biggest barrier to Linux's success there is still availability of applications, both custom and off-the-shelf.
Your ability to migrate to a Linux desktop will be directly proportional to the number of custom Windows applications your organization needs. Porting a lot of applications to the new platform will make the cost of migrating to Linux financially unfeasible.
In addition, the split between the KDE and Gnome camps has long been problematic. It has hampered acceptance of Linux on the desktop because an application written for Gnome won't always work when run under the KDE. True, Linux distribution vendors have begun to address this problem; but for their solution to work, the libraries needed to run applications for both must be installed, increasing the footprint of a desktop install.
Support for off-the-shelf desktop applications is growing, but it has a way to go before it catches up to the Windows and even Mac worlds. Although OpenOffice and its predecessor, StarOffice, provide sufficient compatibility with Microsoft Office products, some of the functionality that migrating Windows users expect--including deep integration with mail clients and browsers--is missing. Expect an adjustment period and some (OK, many) calls to tech support.
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?
