Linux advocates have dragged out and polished up that favourite pre tech wreck word 'bullish' -- judging by their positive predictions about the open source sector.
However, judging by the rash of Linux activity from SMB to government level, some of that optimism has merit. People are moving to Linux predominantly due to cost, reliability and security. Others have moved to Linux because they're disgruntled with some of Microsoft's licensing practices.
Brooke Galloway, research director software and services for IDC Australia, says there is more confidence in Linux as an operating system. 'Probably a few years ago there was some scepticism about how real Linux was. Now most people will acknowledge that there is some longevity to Linux as a solution and as a viable alternative,' she says.
Novell's solutions manager for Australia and New Zealand, Paul Kangro, says Linux has now reached a level of maturity where it is a viable alternative. 'The groundswell is moving rapidly from tyre-kickers to people putting money where their mouth is and rolling this out.'
And Phillip Sargeant, research director for servers and storage, Gartner Asia Pacific, says Linux is certainly gaining traction. Gartner looks at both Linux on the server and Linux on the desktop. 'They're quite different and distinct markets. Linux has probably had a greater impact to this point in time in the data centre on servers.' And contrary to a lot of people's belief, Linux has been cannibalising Unix as well as being at the expense of Microsoft Windows, he says.
The area where Linux has probably been used for most is single-task work in the data centre. Things like web serving, security tasks, caching. 'They're what we regard as edge of the network, not really in the guts of the enterprise or mission critical stuff,' Sargeant says.
While there has been a lot of talk about Linux on the desktop replacing things like Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000, Sargeant says not many people are actually doing it.
Gartner research shows that in 2003, Linux made up 10-12 percent of shipments of servers. 'On the desktop Linux has not had that much traction as yet. But if you look at the data centre and the servers that go into the data centre -- that will grow over the next five years. About 21-22 percent of the servers sold into that space will be Linux oriented. That's in shipments,' says Sargeant.
Sun Microsystems, however, hails 2004 as the year of 'Linux on the desktop'. According to Sun's director of infrastructure solutions, Duncan Bennet, Sun's Java Desktop System is the first Linux-based desktop product to market from a large vendor.
'The market has been waiting for one of the industry giants to do that. With the Java Desktop System you've got a complete open source-based desktop that's a very serious potential replacement for Microsoft on the desktop,' he says.
Express Data agrees there's been a subtle shift in emphasis from server to desktop: 'Our resellers are showing increased interest in solutions built on open source technologies for their SMB customers. These changes are being seen across various environments, from the operating system level through to desktop applications,' says James Salib, IBM technical specialist at Express Data.
Jim Fisher, marketing director for Computer Associates in Australia and New Zealand, is less optimistic. 'Things have to improve because Linux isn't really on the desktop at the moment. The thing that's going to push that is Star Office and the move away from Microsoft. Whether that's a big move or tiny move I don't know, but any move at all is going to be a significant increase for Linux at the moment on the desktop.'
Con Zymaris, CEO of IT services firm Cybersource, says one of the biggest problems the open source sector has had, is there's been no big 'sugar daddy' in terms of marketing funds. 'That's now changed more recently with organisations like Sun, Oracle, Dell and obviously IBM have pumped in quite a lot of money to make Linux known.'
IDC's Galloway says Linux is definitely getting traction but in select areas and functions. 'Typically existing apps that are running on existing platforms are not being replaced by Linux unless it's part of a larger project. But for new projects, Linux is absolutely being considered as a viable option,' she says.
Sun's Bennet says the company has seen tremendous activity at the government level. 'Even on a national government level -- for example China, which has just inked a deal with Sun for a million copies of the Java Desktop System.'
He says the UK government has also signed a contract with Sun for up to 500,000 copies of Java Desktop System. 'It's already public knowledge Telstra is piloting in Australia, and the NSW government put these technologies on the panel in November so that government agencies can elect to purchase these products as alternatives to Microsoft. 'Just in NSW alone we've got six government departments trialling this new technology, and that accounts for about 30,000 seats/users already,' he says.
Astute Systems is an open source integrator and Brisbane-based Red Hat business partner. Astute's CEO Paul Moore says Queensland University has spent $3 million on a Linux supercomputer, and most universities are deploying Linux in some form.
Moore says the Queensland Greens political party is running a web server on Linux, and one of Astute's customers, Q*print Australia, has used Linux as the backbone of the company's business infrastructure since 2002.
The tangible benefits Q*Print found from using Linux were 'More up-time, less initial costs, less ongoing cost to administer it', says Q*Print's founder Douglas Heath.
Show me the money
According to Geoff Lawrence, IBM Linux business manager Australia - New Zealand, the channel makes its money from Linux in three areas: margin, revenue derived from software apps they might write themselves and services. The services business is the dominant revenue earner nowadays, he says.
CA says there is definitely money to be made from selling Linux. 'Yes. We're selling millions of US dollars worth of Linux, and while it's not a large part of our revenue, it's still significant,' Fisher says. 'It's not just Linux for Linux sake, it's supporting technology for that whole on-demand computing environment that's coming down the track.'
Astute's Moore says one of the challenges for the Linux customer and where service providers can make up some ground financially is in greater customisation requirements. 'Open source can be pretty much customised forever, it depends on how deep you dig. So we're able to say to clients, yes we can do that … and that's much more viable at a lower cost than say re-engineering key components of Windows.'
Gartner says the government sector has certainly been more vocal than anybody else about Linux. 'There is a cost element associated with that; they want flexibility, they want a little more openness and to get away from the proprietary closed nature of some software,' says Sargeant.
Zymaris says particularly in the past 18 months governments have been looking more at open source. 'There's a number of major and minor deployments. The National Library has 30 to 40 Linux servers running, without them the national library in Canberra would shut down. 'The National Archives Office is using Open Office; and in the past 12 months NOIE has moved forward [wit
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