Linux a recession winner, IDC finds
Linux long ago became the "furniture" of open source: essential infrastructure to most of the Fortune 500 and somewhat mundane in its predictable, ever-increasing adoption.
Despite its impressive rise, however, Linux still has a long, long way to go. While results of an IDC survey published this week found that 55 percent of the 300 IT executives surveyed already had Linux systems in use, a full 97 percent were running Windows.
IDC: Linux adoption in a global recession
Linux, in other words, still has a long way to go to reach full adoption and, importantly, the vendors that sell it have even further to go to effectively monetize its popularity.
Novell, which commissioned the IDC survey, stands to benefit, as do Red Hat and Canonical (Ubuntu). Indeed, unless the vendors royally screw up, each should benefit handsomely, as the planned adoption of Linux is significant, as IDC found:
- More than 72 percent of those surveyed are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009, with more than 68 percent making the same claim for the desktop;
- More than 40 percent of respondents say they plan to deploy additional workloads on Linux over the next 12 to 24 months, and 49 percent indicated that Linux will be their primary server platform within five years;
- Perhaps because of the desire to go "all Linux," only 22 percent of those surveyed identify "Interoperability" as a top-three consideration when choosing a server operating system. This could also help explain why Novell's partnership with Microsoft may be stalling, as ChannelWeb recently wrote.
Interoperability is important, but it pales in importance when compared to performance and cost for most CIOs. When asked which factors would accelerate new deployments of Linux, only 24 percent cited greater interoperability with Windows;
- Surprisingly, nearly 50 percent expect to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop, especially for basic office functions, technical workstation users, and higher education/K-12. Along with ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn, this is one that I'll believe when i see it;
- Nearly 50 percent stated that virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of recipients plan to evaluate, deploy, or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12 to 24 months.
While much of this Linux adoption will come at the expense of incumbent Unix vendors, I would suspect that an increasing percentage will cut into Windows, particularly in the server market but also for specialized desktop applications, like in the retail sector (63 percent of respondents in retail are looking to accelerate their Linux adoption).
Regardless of the market, however, Linux stands to gain. But for Novell, Red Hat, and Canonical, I would argue that their biggest competitor, at least in the short term, isn't Microsoft or any of the Unix vendors. No, their biggest competitor is unpaid Linux adoption.
For Red Hat, CentOS is likely its biggest competitor. For Novell, after Red Hat, I would imagine that Ubuntu is its biggest hurdle to monetizing Linux adoption. And for Canonical/Ubuntu? It is its own biggest enemy, when it comes to turning downloads into dollars, because it does such an effective job of encouraging downloads.
Regardless, these are good problems to have in a recessed economy. I wouldn't want to be selling proprietary, expensive Unix right now. Microsoft Windows offers a compelling value proposition in a fiscally prudent environment, but for those chief information officers interested in performance, Linux is going to win more competitive bids against Windows than it loses.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
this isnt a bad thing, sure it would be great to steal MS market share, but companies like IBM and HP that pour a ton of $$$ into these unix systems would double their efforts on their Linux code contributions (hopefully).
I have to disagree on that point about performance. It's always critical to get the most power out of your steel, but if I'd rather put in 11 servers instead of 10 and run an OS that has broader support, works well with the desktop infrastructure that's already in place and that the IT staff knows how to use already. OS prices aren't that much different, (unless you roll with a free distro) so the price of the OS doesn't attract me.
You are constantly talking about 'converting' users to paid for versions of software as if that were the only open source business model. But there is another model that just sells related things like service, support, expertise, and code modification services - but NOT the software itself. Part of the theory behind this is if you give away the full-boat product, and it's very high quality, it will get really popular and you will have a much bigger pool of users from which to sell services. It seems to be working for Ubuntu at least, which now has a huge and growing user base and significant revenue after just a few years. Why don't you talk about THAT model sometimes.
RHEL's support for default SELinux configurations has an established track record about mitigating several vulnerability issues. There's no such record of performance concerning AppArmor mitigating anything as far as I can find. Either in Suse or in Ubuntu. Anyone who takes a really close look at how limited the default AppArmor policy configurations are in Ubuntu will be in for a shock.
The lack of support of SELinux will be just one problem for Canonical if it tries to compete with RHEL with customers who really care about security as indicated by that survey.
There is also the issue that Canonical isn't putting nearly any effort into the security assessment reporting that Red Hat is doing. There's nothing like the risk reporting efforts Red Hat does to keep their security response process transparent and open.
http://magazine.redhat.com/2009/03/10/risk-report-four-years-of-red-hat-enterprise-linux-4/
http://magazine.redhat.com/2009/01/20/enterprise-linux-52-to-53-risk-report/
How old is Canonical's oldest still supported LTS server release? Almost three years into 6.06 LTS's release. Have we ever seen a comprehensive security report communicated?
How exactly does Canonical plan to compete with Red Hat's level of attention to detail on security?
The enterprise market is lucrative exactly because the customers there are more demanding of receiving value for money. Canonical is going to have to really sharpen up on what matters to customers to make a support services sales pitch compete in the face of the value that Red Hat offers.
-jef
- by jabailo August 2, 2009 10:30 AM PDT
- What "proprietary" Unix vendors are left?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(8 Comments)No offense, but this sound like the old damning Linux with faint praise trick that MS has been doing for years.
Oh, goes the line -- Linux is catching on...by replacing Unix.
No, Linux is eating into Windows...desktop sales went kerplonk because of Vista and Windows 7 is perceived as pure marketing hype ... same product, more expensive price.
Meanwhile Netbooks are being sold with Linux, Intel and Novell are building Moblin into the chips...etc...etc
If there's any proprietary Unix that Linux will replace...it would be OSX.