Another turbulent period of change is facing
organisations over the next two years. Desktop roll-outs are one of
the biggest and costliest headaches for any enterprise, and the
prospect of another version of Windows is daunting.
It is a time for all IT departments to assess where they are
going, and this fact has not escaped the attention of Linux
suppliers.
At the Brainshare Novell user conference in Salt Lake City last
month the company flagged the summer launch of version 10 of its
SuSE Linux Enterprise operating system for servers and desktops.
The company is positioning its Linux offering as a less complex
alternative to the Vista release of Windows.
Jack Messman, chief executive and president of Novell, said,
"Microsoft's Vista is going to require a big migration and more
end-user training, and it makes sense that corporations will look
at desktop Linux as an alternative now."
Linux on the desktop has come a long way since Novell and Red
Hat turned their focus on the needs of the corporate user.
Delivering the kind of polish and user-friendliness required is
changing the perception that Linux is the preserve of the bearded,
sandal-wearing geek.
Gary Barnett, research director at analyst firm Ovum, said, "In
2003 the battle was between the suits and the sandals but in 2004
the suits took over. This brought a lot of confidence to corporate
customers, many of whom are quite conservative.
"It is never a bad time to look at Linux, but the question is
whether it has reached the stage where companies will like what
they see. In the past year we have seen some important changes that
make Linux more viable but, in my view, Linux is still not quite at
the stage where the general customer will view it as a desktop
alternative to Windows. It still has a few rough edges, but it is
really very close to being ready for use within the
enterprise."
One aspect of this new professional approach was demonstrated by
Novell at Brainshare. During a keynote a series of pictures showed
lab testing where first-time users were exposed to desktop SuSE
Linux and its applications to discover where usability problems may
lie.
This is something that Microsoft has been doing for many years
and it has vastly improved Windows. In many ways Linux has a lot of
catching up to do, but the past record has shown that the community
learns fast - both from its own research and from Microsoft's
example.
Red Hat runs similar tests and Gerry Riveros, product marketing
manager for desktop client solutions, said, "The look and feel has
to be similar to what everyone has been trained to use, but we are
still trying to do something that is different because we are not
trying to be a Windows clone.
"The differences come around security and the way we handle that
and the way we handle manageability. If you look at the total cost
of ownership for an enterprise, it is not so much the acquisition
costs that is the big driver, it is the management costs for all
the people involved - the systems administrators. This is where we
have been focusing our efforts to really drive those costs
down."
In the early days, using Linux on the desktop was seen as an
individual's choice. The operating system and graphical user
interface (GUI) had to be loaded on a computer-by-computer basis,
and ongoing management was down to each user's preferences.
In the corporate world, centralised management is important in
keeping costs down, and so we have seen the rise of Linux
equivalents of Microsoft Systems Manager.
Red Hat has Satellite Server for bare-metal installation and
hardware configuration, or Network Server for application roll-outs
and client management. For Novell, these functions are contained
within the Zenworks suite alongside features such as patch
management and handheld device management.
The software suppliers are moving closer to the computer makers,
as witnessed by Red Hat's long-established links with IBM,
Hewlett-Packard and Dell.
Dell announced at Brainshare that it will be supplying a
customised version of Novell's management system, Zenworks 7 Linux
Management - Dell Edition, as an exclusive offering for Poweredge
servers running Linux. Significantly, no similar announcement has
been made for desktop Linux.
Laurent Lachal, a senior analyst at Ovum, said, "Suppliers like
Dell will definitely not jump on to the bandwagon until it is
mainstream. IBM may be first to move but it has been quite shy to
do so in the past."
Security management is still developing in these packages, with
Red Hat using Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) and Novell
open-sourcing its own project Apparmor.
SELinux has been developed by the US National Security Agency
(NSA) with the help of the Linux community. It is a policy-based
application that confines each program's access rights only to
files needed to complete specific actions. Novell's Apparmor works
in a similar way, but automatically analyses how an application
behaves, locking out any unexpected behaviour.
This means that much of the security is handled within the
operation so that firewalls and anti-virus applications can be less
complex than their Windows equivalents.
Linux is inherently more resistant to malicious code than
Windows, but this is a contentious area and complacency is a
dangerous attitude in IT. There is a wide range of third-party
products covering firewalling and anti-virus protection from
companies such as Check Point, SmoothWall, Firestarter, Computer
Associates, Sophos, F-Secure, Trend Micro and Kaspersky Labs.
A major problem when considering Linux clients is the lack of
application software. Even the suppliers admit that the best uses
for Linux desktops are in the kiosk, basic office and specialist
workstation areas.
Michael Silver, research vice-president at analyst firm Gartner,
explained that the user interface for Novell Desktop looks a lot
more mature than previous interfaces, but even though this may
inspire more confidence it is not so important to a business.
"The piece that companies still have to realise when they start
rolling Linux out is that it is still Linux. If they have Windows
applications that the users need, they are going to have to do
something about those. If they have browser applications that
specifically require Internet Explorer, they are going to have some
problems and need tweaks. If their users are heavy Office users,
they are going to have to make sure that the new version of
Openoffice is sufficient and can execute the macros that they need
and displays existing documents with sufficient fidelity."
Openoffice has become the main Linux-based competitor for
Microsoft Office and it is included with most packaged Linux
desktops. It will display most Microsoft formats and the move to
open XML formats as the default for the next version of Microsoft
Office will only help interoperability - even though Openoffice
favours a different XML schema: Oasis Open Document Format
(ODF).
Novell has also co-ordinated the development of Mono, which
allows Microsoft .net server and client applications to run on
Linux. Mono is based on Microsoft's C# and Common Language
Interface and includes class libraries for Linux so that .net
applications can be made to run in a Linux/Windows cross-platform
environment.
However, until all Windows applications are written to .net, the
gulf between Linux and Windows will remain. Initiatives to
encourage independent software suppliers to develop for Linux is
starting to pick up speed, with Messman reporting that Novell has
seen a rise from 40 partners during last year's conference to more
than 1,000 this year.
Lachal said, "There are still quite a lot of applications, like
Adobe Photoshop, which are mainstream applications but are not yet
on Linux.
"Any major adoption of desktop Linux is still about two years
away. The latest versions of Linux from both Novell and Red Hat are
mature, but still lack the number of applications required and I
think that, mainly Novell, will have to educate the channel to push
the desktop - and that will take some time both from channel and
applications development points of view."
Winning the battle to get the word out will still not be enough.
Silver said, "Novell Desktop 10 is an important release in the
evolution of desktop Linux. It has virtual private network clients
which has been one of the most requested features by companies for
a long time.
"It adds integrated search which makes it useful for knowledge
workers. But it comes down to the application mix that the user
needs to access and the degree of migration of applications that is
required - the replacement of Windows applications with others.
These considerations drive the costs up."
The hope was that Windows emulation would help bridge the gap,
but now these efforts are being eclipsed by the availability of
virtualisation software, primarily from Cambridge University's Xen
project, which is being adopted by both Red Hat and Novell. This
enables two different operating systems and their applications to
be run on the same machine simultaneously.
Lachal does not buy into this. "What the enterprise wants to do
is to standardise on one specific image of a system. They are not
about letting users play around with two operating systems at the
same time because that would be too complex."
The signs are there that Linux is maturing into something that
can be as useful as Windows but is being seriously hindered by the
lack of key applications. Anyone considering change should look at
the bigger picture over the next two or three years as broadband
internet is more widely adopted.
Barnett said, "Take a look at Linux every six months because it
is changing fast. As we get into broadband internet and
browser-based, on-demand services such as Salesforce.com or
NetSuite, you are no longer tied to a desktop, and that opens up
all sorts of possibilities.
"Ironically, companies need to ask themselves where they want to
go today. How do they want to interact with information technology?
Where do they want to store their data?. How do they want to
exchange data? Do they want to carry a laptop or something
lighter?"
Whatever the future holds, whether that is sticking with
Windows, experimenting with Linux or becoming platform agnostic in
a browser-driven age, change is inevitable. Linux has become more
than interesting, but less than irresistible.
Lachal summed up the situation, "There is not going to be a
silver bullet that will make people want to switch to Linux. It is
going to be slow. It is going to be hard. It is going to be costly.
Novell's message that Vista's arrival will be a good opportunity to
reconsider your strategy is not really something that is going to
happen for most companies."