As might be anticipated participants at this week’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco revealed a slew of initiatives aimed at advancing the cause of open-source software products in general, and of Linux in particular. In no specific order of importance, the LinuxWorld event saw major announcements from Oracle, Hewlett Packard and IBM.

Oracle advertised the general availability of ‘Oracle Cluster File System Release 2 (OCFS 2)’, an enterprise-class open-source cluster file system that, says the company, provides customers with a free alternative to expensive proprietary systems. The new release will be included as a standard component in Novell's ‘SUSE Linux Enterprise Server’ distributions, giving customers a pre-installed cluster file management solution. "'Oracle Cluster File System Release 2' delivers significant cluster file management improvements that help our customers reduce IT costs without compromising quality or performance," claimed David Patrick, vice president and general manager, Linux, Open Source Platforms and Services at Novell. "Linux adoption in the enterprise continues to increase, thanks to the commitment and technology advancements made by companies like Oracle".

HP unveiled new products, services and programmes that it said would help customers simplify and accelerate the adoption of Linux and open source in the data centre. The offerings included four new Linux Expertise Centers for independent software vendors and extended services for customers in HP Solution Centers worldwide. The company also debuted more than 200 open source packages on HP ‘Integrity NonStop’ servers, programs developed to facilitate the use of open source technology across vendors and operating systems, and 'Virus Throttle for Linux', a security technology that is designed to provide proactive, intelligent defence against unknown virus threats based on Linux.

HP claims to have sold more Linux servers than any other major hardware vendor and says it continues to aggressively licence patents under the General Public License. "An impressive amount of HP's growth from the last 2 years came from products and services based on open source," said Martin Fink, vice president and general manager, Open Source and Linux Organization and NonStop Enterprise Division, HP.

IBM, another heavyweight IT firm that asserts number one ranking in overall Linux-based server revenue worldwide, said it had done a deal with open source solutions provider Red Hat that would enables organisations to evaluate, for a period of 90 days, a combined ‘IBM Workplace Services Express v2.5’ collaboration software and Red Hat ‘Enterprise Linux’ operating system solution. The duo maintain that the agreement will make it easier for customers, including small to medium-sized businesses and individual departments within large companies, to test ‘Workplace’ collaborative software in the ‘Enterprise Linux’ platform environment.

IBM is also refining the way it develops and delivers Linux solutions. From here on in, as well as aligning its Linux strategy by industry, the approach will be to focus on particular customer requirements rather than on products. Big Blue reckons the move represents the most significant realignment of IBM's worldwide approach to Linux-related sales and marketing since it embraced the OS five years ago.

All not well at Linux desktop, though
Notwithstanding these and similar Linux boosting initiatives a new Gartner analysis - ‘Examining Where Desktop Linux and Open-Source Office Products Make Sense’ - suggests that there’s a lack of momentum for open-source in enterprise desktops and office products: Linux and open-source software products may generate a lot of interest, but buyers of these products for the desktop have been slow to materialise. 

During Q4 2004, Gartner surveyed attendees at the Gartner Symposium conferences in Lake Buena Vista , Florida , and Cannes , France , about their use of client operating systems. Based on these results, Gartner believes that just over 1% of enterprise users were running Linux desktops. In a separate forecast report, Gartner estimates that only 3.2% of non-consumer users will run Linux by 2008.

This looks to be a case of: 'it’s the economics, stupid'. "For most companies, the cost to migrate away from Microsoft Windows is simply too high and outweighs the benefits companies expect they will receive," ventures Michael Silver, research vice president in Gartner’s Client Platforms group. "Most large companies have hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, and the cost to migrate them to run on or be accessible from Linux clients is huge".

Gartner believes the public sector is more likely to be interested in Linux and open source office products, but even there, movement has been measured. "Open source is gaining ground in the public sector because the government calculates return on investment differently from the private sector, so the benefits that advance political agendas or enhance the economy can also be considered", judges Gartner research vice president Andrea DiMaio.

Gartner finds that even in emerging markets, open source adoption on the desktop has been sluggish. "Migration issues have made it more difficult to adopt Linux, and in many places, pirated Microsoft products have been low-cost competition to Linux", adds Gartner Client Platforms research director Martin Gilliland.
John Williamson