Hard-hitting IT commentator Simon Moores gives his personal take on
a hot issue of the day.I'm an equal opportunity employer. Really I
am. I'm prepared to consider Linux as a serious operating
alternative to anything available from Microsoft and, so it seems,
do an increasing number of large businesses, encouraged by the
power of IBM.
It's been almost three years since Bob Young gave me my own Red Hat
to wear. Since then - and regardless of attempts by You Know Who to
marginalise the operating system as a geeky fad - Linux has found
the industry support it needs to launch into the enterprise server
market.
Most noticeably, Oracle (9i) has said that it is now giving Linux
equal status in a market it now sees as being split three ways -
between Windows, Linux and Solaris.
This is an enormous boost for Linux fortunes, as the OS now offers
the credibility that goes with the support of both IBM and Oracle,
an event that finally dismisses any suggestion that Linux is a
risky "unsupported" environment attractive to only the very brave
or the very foolish IS director.
And it's not just IBM and Oracle leading the charge. Linux
continues to grow market share at around 30% a year.
Not so long ago I was having heated arguments with people about the
potential for utility computing and cheap applications servers
using Linux. The first of these is IBM's 21st century reinvention
of "bureau computing".
This uses Linux Virtual Services, connecting customers to managed,
Linux-based applications on mainframes at e-business hosting
centres. It looks set to revive one or more fundamental elements of
the ASP concept that fell flat last year.
The second, the arrival of a wave of cheap server appliances
running Linux instead of Windows, is still, I suspect, two years
away. You could never really describe Sun as cheap - but the demand
among businesses and governments to drive down the costs of
computing is driving the agenda at a pace that is hard to
ignore.
Tilting Microsoft off its comfortable perch is still going to be
difficult, if only because half of the market is still owned by the
company. The other Unix flavours of HP-UX and Solaris are more
likely to be a victim of Linux ambitions before any serious pain is
felt by Microsoft, which is busily developing Windows into a
powerful enterprise OS and one good enough to take on any variant
of Unix.
Perhaps, in the end, the future of Linux can be seen as a huge game
of poker with the future of enterprise computing represented by the
chips. Buying a place at the table costs millions or even billions
of dollars in development and marketing money, and only IBM, Sun,
Oracle and Microsoft can really afford to play.
The winner may not be the company with the best hand. It could be
the one with the best bluff.
What's your view?
Is Linux a serious enterprise
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Zentelligence: Setting the world to rights with the collected
thoughts and opinions of the futurist writer, broadcaster and
Computer Weekly columnist Simon Moores.