Why customers are flocking to Linux (page 1 of 3)

According to a Butler Group report, 'Linux in the Enterprise: A Viable Alternative for Server and Desktop Operating Systems?' September, 2004, the successful emergence of Linux to capture a "significant share of the enterprise server market" has led some members of the vendor community to "hotly dispute the actual figures."

Hot disputes aside, when a technology goes from a student project in 1991 to being part of Charles Schwab's solution to reduce processing times by 90 percent in 2004—something is working
It might be time to look beyond the numbers to the advantages Linux provides its practitioners to understand Linux growth.

The advantages of Linux are: Flexibility, Security, Reliability, Total value and Future value; let us examine these in turn.

Flexibility

Linux uncouples the operating system decision from the hardware decision. This flexibility lets customers choose what hardware is best from price and performance standpoints, consolidate operations and better control costs.

For example, Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway company, recently announced the completion of the migration of their IBM Lotus Notes and Domino e-mail system to an IBM eServer zSeries 990 running Novell SUSE LINUX. Deutsche Bahn's Lotus Notes mail system supports 55,000 users and is the technology platform for more than 5,500 databases containing 6.5 terabytes of data.

The scale of the migration demonstrates the enterprise scalability possible using the combination of Linux, IBM software and IBM servers. The benefits promise to be continuous cost savings through higher flexibility in terms of vendor independence and improved integration

Another example is Banco do Brasil in Europe. With nearly 1,000 top banks in 145 countries, this significant player in world banking has switched its European operations from a PC-based server farm running Microsoft Windows NT to an integrated IBM eServer xSeries and iSeries environment under Linux.

The cost savings delivered through system consolidation will be the immediate benefit of the new IBM infrastructure. The banking system from Banco do Brasil's six European offices will run on a single iSeries in London, dramatically reducing administrative overheads and increasing efficiency.

Linux also provides the flexibility to port applications across systems and control costs in future through vendor choice.

Case in point: Washington County in southwest Virginia recently developed an e-government portal to serve its more than 51,000 citizens and 1,200 employees. The solution uses IBM DB2, Lotus and WebSphere software to bring legacy applications to the Web so that citizens and employees can access information to greatly improve government service and employee productivity.

The solution runs on Red Hat Linux and provides Washington County the flexibility to work with their existing legacy applications and new applications. It also provides a flexible, scalable foundation for the future.

Nadine Culberson, information systems manager at Washington County stated that the IBM software and Linux provided the flexibility the county needed. "We evaluated a lot of solutions, including Microsoft.NET, but the IBM WebSphere solution gave us an open, integrated environment to build e-government solutions across a variety of hardware and software platforms."

Linux can run along with other operating systems. It's not a rip-and-replace proposition. This enables organizations like Washington County to build solutions that can adapt to changing needs.