Mission-critical spotlight increasingly shines on Linux

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Almost half of the world's large businesses will favour Linux for their mission-critical applications by the end of 2011, according to research.

But most companies won't realise their appetite for open source until at least next year, with just 18 per cent of businesses relying on Linux for such workloads by the end of 2007.

By the end of the decade, many organisations will start to truly embrace Linux beyond just proof of concept activities, claims the research, which surveyed senior IT decision makers and was conducted by Saugatuck Technology.

Saugatuck believes that the number of businesses in early or full deployment of Linux for mission-critical application workloads will surge by almost 40 per cent between 2007 and 2009 and then rocket by 80 per cent between 2009 and 2011.

"By now it should be obvious to even the most casual industry observers that Linux operating systems - and open source-based software in general - have reached critical marketplace mass," said the report.

"Recent Linux deals and announcements by Oracle and Microsoft have only reinforced the 'open source is enterprise-grade' message that IBM, Unisys and other master brand hardware, software and services vendors have been preaching for years. In short, open source, especially Linux, is becoming 'legitimised' by the major vendors for enterprise environments, and user executives are more than happy to believe them."

All industry stakeholders, including hardware vendors, will need to position themselves to take advantage of this inevitable shift in attitude towards Linux, according to the research.

"Microsoft's thawing toward Linux is now easier to understand when faced with such data - even as Windows continues to grow as the other main server platform of choice," the report states.

"Linux is not going to replace legacy operating systems and development environments overnight, or even by 2011. But the powerful trend of acceptance and legitimisation of Linux for mission-critical environments indicates that a very large portion of the next generation will be built on Linux."

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