The statistics don't lie: Gartner reports that Linux-based server shipments grew from 425,000 in 2002 to 660,000 in 2003, a whopping 25 percent of the server OS market today. The analyst firm predicts that number to rise to 1.5 million shipments by 2008. Technically, Linux's core developers have made its source code kernel more enterprise-palatable. A new release, version 2.6, sports key enhancements around database support, performance and clustering that will appeal to CIOs who want assurances that the OS is robust enough to run mission-critical systems.
"A few years ago, when we said that Linux was ready for the enterprise, it was considered a joke," said IBM chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano in his recent keynote speech at PartnerWorld. "Well, things have changed."
ISV Opportunity
Microsoft has made a fine living signing up ISVs in its own variation on the '80s credo on greed, "He who dies with the most toys, wins." In its case, the toys are applications. With thousands upon thousands of desirable Windows business programs in the marketplace, customers have almost no choice but to turn to the Windows infrastructure that runs them.
But make no mistake. As mainstream Linux apps such as ERP, human resources, accounting and CRM become more available, customers will respond in kind. And the platform players are well aware of the opportunity to expand their own universe through the proliferation of Linux applications. IBM, Novell and BEA are courting ISVs heavily to write to Linux and then ride on top of their respective stacks of middleware and services. Cornelius Willis, vice president of developer marketing at BEA and a former Microsoft executive who contributed to the development of Visual Basic, says that Linux "changes the whole game for developers" in terms of giving them a deployment choice in the J2EE environment that is as affordable and potentially widely distributed as Microsoft's platform.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ISV equation, software companies that sell business applications say they are getting nudged by customers that are eager to kick the Linux tires for much more mainstream uses than today's typical deployment in a standalone firewall appliance.
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