Posted on 07/25/2003 7:16:17 PM PDT by HAL9000
The continued adoption of Linux by large enterprise in the face of SCO's legal threats is not surprising, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "I don't think many of them thought of it as a big threat, I think they viewed it as a mosquito at a picnic -- a sort of gnat buzzing around."Despite legal threats from SCO Group, Linux use by large enterprises is growing, according to a survey by network security company Netcraft. The firm's survey shows Linux growth in the Web server sector, which has long been one of the open source OS's strongest markets.
The list of large enterprise sites that have migrated to Linux in the last two months includes Royal Sun Alliance, Deutsche Bank, SunGard, and Schwab. Linux saw a net gain of 100 sites among the 24,000 Web sites run by 1,500 large companies in this period, according to Netcraft.
Netcraft data even shows that the White House site is powered by Apache on Linux, though this appears to have been set up prior to the SCO suit.
The continued adoption of Linux by large enterprise in the face of SCO's legal threats is not surprising, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "I don't think many of them thought of it as a big threat, I think they viewed it as a mosquito at a picnic -- a sort of gnat buzzing around."
However, "I think that's going to change as the months go on," she told NewsFactor.
Warning Letter
In May, SCO sent letters to 1500 of the largest companies globally warning them of the legal risks involved in running Linux. Although SCO did not make the identities of these companies public, Netcraft noted that it is "likely that the list of companies that received letters from SCO is quite similar to the list of sites we use to study enterprises' web site technology choices."
Some analysts speculate that SCO's legal action will slow enterprise Linux adoption among enterprises, both large and small. Meta Group analyst Thomas Murphy told NewsFactor that "If SCO has the intellectual property rights, then they're going to be the license holder, and any Linux distribution would pick up a fee, potentially, from SCO for every single copy."
Given that one of Linux's biggest advantages is that it is lower cost than proprietary software, this added fee "would be detrimental," to Linux adoption, Murphy said.
Reasons for Continued Growth
Explaining the apparent paradox of continued Linux growth in the face of potential legal action, Netcraft said that "It may well be that although SCO has generated an enormous amount of attention from the media and Linux evangelists, it does not presently have the attention of IT practitioners in large companies."
Netcraft listed a variety of additional possible explanations for Linux's increased growth despite legal threats: Companies realize the costs of migrating from Linux to FreeBSD at a later date, if needed, would be small, and they may feel the chance of a SCO victory is remote.
Relying On IBM
These large companies figure that "it will be years before this gets to court, they'll probably settle, IBM says 'don't worry,'" DiDio said.
However, "IBM had better step up to the plate and start saying whether or not they will indemnify their customers, and if so, to what extent," she said. SCO has filed a $3 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging that IBM misapropriated SCO's Unix intellectual property, using it to increase Linux's capabilities.
Though IBM has denied SCO's charge, IBM should indemnify their customers anyway, DiDio said. "Microsoft has a great indemnification clause in their contract that they put in back in April," she noted.
That IBM has yet to offer their customers such an indemnification is troubling, DiDio said. "That fact that they're not doing it, and that they're not saying what they're going to do, I find that silence really ominous."
Some Move To Windows
Although Linux saw a net gain, "it is by no means one way traffic," Netcraft said. Of the 24,000 enterprise sites included in the survey, in the past twelve months over 1600 have changed operating systems.
Indeed, some firms have migrated to Windows. Examples of these firms are Valaro Energy, National Service Industries and Colt. Cadbury Schweppes has tried all three operating systems in last two years, and it currently runs on Windows 2000.
Give me a break! I ran SNA channel conversion on UNIX at a quarter of the cost that it took on MS platforms.
Sorry, but MS is still stuck in the 32 bit world, SVR4 has long since been in the 64 bit world. The ONLY thing 64 bit is going to allow MS, more space to load up hidden crap.
Apparently you missed several of my posts above.
Actually, we have long since moved practically all of our 'multi-user' systems to M$ from VMS, Unix, Novell over the last 10+ years. All Quad Dell's, each E-Mail server handles ~500 per, Several Database 1,000+, fileservers 3,000+ connections. Our Unix systems are now all in engineering, where they use them for design, but rarely share data outside of engineering.
This is just the system that has evolved, and it works better than ever before.
This is largely the fault of Microsoft. If NT 4.0 wasn't such a dog as a server they should have had that market sewn up. As it was, it took them forever to get a decent new server OS version together and Linux was an upstart that just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Microsoft may have serviceable server product now (though a FreeBSD box will still clean its clock), but everyone has already made a huge investment going back to Unix, and unlike MS, they aren't blowing their current advantage. MS gave Linux a window of opportunity, and now Linux scales better and with higher availability than Windows can in addition to owning a fat chunk of the OS share in data centers. I'm sure Microsoft has been kicking themselves ever since. And of course, IBM has seized this opportunity to hammer MS over some old bad blood, which is no small part of the overall equation that has given us the current market condition. It is a healthy market overall.
The dark horse is MacOS X, which with its FreeBSD pedigree and soon to be available 64-bit IBM core could be a real contender on the server side. It depends on what Apple does with it execution-wise, but they are making all the right noises and the platform components (FreeBSD on 64-bit IBM core) are top-shelf.
Ummm... Revenues have nothing to do with market share. Unix is pervasive, but it isn't generating much in the way of direct revenues these days. It is generating a ton of indirect service revenue.
For example, one of the companies I am currently involved with operates one of the fastest growing fiber optic networks in North America and possibly the world currently, and growing like crazy. In fact, their fabric is becoming an increasingly important part of the North American internet. They have a core mission critical database system that controls their global networks and all realtime billing data and so forth i.e. that system is their business. The application runs on "re-purposed" Windows servers that now run Linux which nobody paid for. Using your metric, this shows that Microsoft is "winning" because they sold a license for these servers, and that Linux/Unix is "losing" because nobody got paid for the deployment.
It is worth noting that these guys (a sharp bunch with a very slick operation) could not have attracted investor money (not that they ever needed it) if they were using Windows to support their operation, since it is a 24/7 business. As in, that was actually a question people interested in investing in the company ask.
The important part here is that while both Windows and Linux are being deployed in high numbers, the mission-critical backend is mostly Unix of one stripe or another. The TCO argument for Windows is weak if Linux is pervasive on the backend, and the less-than-mission-critical positions that Windows servers are put in are frequently (but not always) fungible whereas mission critical services are not. In other words, Linux can replace what Windows is currently doing to a great extent, but Windows cannot replace what Linux is doing. The company I mentioned above will be replacing their current core Linux system with some really Big Iron soon, also running Linux. It is worth noting that this system is more powerful than anything Windows runs on -- as I said, Big Iron. Given that they are committed to running Linux since they require servers that are bigger than anything Windows can do, there is a certain amount of efficiency in homogenizing the other servers to all Linux as well where feasible.
And that is the kind of calculus that MS is facing. The number of things that Linux can do on servers that Windows can't is substantially greater than the number of things Windows can do on servers that Linux can't. Given this selection pressure and the low cost of Linux, Windows will slowly be marginalized, particularly since it is getting it ass kicked most severely in the higher-end markets by a product that is cheaper than Windows. Since they don't own the low-end market either, that is an uncomfortable position and they'll find themselves squeezed as the calculus finds favor in Linux many times.
I'm not a particularly big fan of Linux personally for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I have a LOT of experience with many different operating systems. Still, I can't reasonably ignore the fact that Linux is cleaning house in the data center. Windows may still control the departmental file server market and such, but I don't see that as a particularly secure position if you are incapable of competing effectively in the data centers.
The truth is that one of the reasons closed source is at a disadvantage in this area is in fact the "monoculture" of, for example, Microsoft.
An example? compare the progress of SUN Micro's Solaris and Linux. Solaris grows and improves *MUCH* more slowly than Linux does. Solaris is of course closed source...
Microsoft themselves have paid lip service to the advantage of open source review with their program to allow other groups to "view" their source. but in the typical way microsoft created this program (vis - it was all done by their lawyers) it makes it diffucult and uninteresting for the other party -- microsoft ends up with any changes that the other party comes up with...
Yggdrasil, v1.03!
Mark
Heck, you can get Apache on a lot of different platforms. In fact, Apache is the default web server on Novell NetWare 6.0 and later (although Netscape Enterprise Web Server is still there, if you need it.) Apache is a totally different project and is completely independant of Linux.
Mark
Keep believing that. In many ways, it is more important. Ask Red Hat, who is retreating from markets for the lack of profit they can produce.
http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=364
And that is the kind of calculus that MS is facing. The number of things that Linux can do on servers that Windows can't is substantially greater than the number of things Windows can do on servers that Linux can't.
Like what? Your blanket statements are comical. M$ is stronger than ever before, while you *nix guys fight it out between yourself. You're only making M$ stronger by supporting the plague of Linux.
No I didn't
'Scuse me. Take it up with the party who wrote that.
Hint: it wasn't me.
Sheesh.
-Jay
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