The economics of Linux (II)

Issue Date: 04/01/2000
Issue Number: 10.11

Linux might be the hacker's dream come true, but for a growing segment of enterprise IT managers, the OS is beginning to become a serious server alternative, both to NT and more expensive UNIX platforms.

As we noted last month, this means deep cultural changes in a Linux community that grew up in a truly open environment and which encouraged community development of software that nobody - and everybody owned. Although the open source model might seem flaky at first glance, it has compiled a respectable track record. For instance, today's Web has been built in large part thanks to two open source programs: the Apache web server and the SendMail utility that forwards email.

But we also believe that, to catch on in corporate environments, more formalized service and support offerings are needed. That said, however, the formal model of enterprise software management and support has yet to catch on among the Linux community. For the most part, Linux has been deployed for backroom functions such as DNS or mail servers.

We took a cursory look last year at Linux implementations (see Computer Finance, January 1999), and this year, we take a more serious look. We canvassed Linux user groups and major Linux distribution providers and services firms and saw the first traces of mainstream IT use. We came up with a detailed survey of 10 Linux sites.

Given the back room and hacker origins of Linux, we still found that most deployments were occurring below corporate IT's radar - just like the Apple IIce's and PCs of yesteryear and PDAs of today. But, given Linux's growing maturity, we also uncovered some clues of what enterprise Linux might indeed look like.

STUDY SAMPLE

We wanted to get a representative sample of Linux users to gain a reasonably valid picture of the costs, savings, and implementation issues associated with Linux use. So we conducted a dual strategy. We contacted major Linux vendors, including providers of packaged distributions and services; not surprisingly, customer references provided by vendors tended to be larger IT groups. However, given Linux's grassroots heritage, we also wanted to get a more random sampling from the field. We emailed a cross section of regional Linux user groups and, through a winnowing process, identified users willing to share their experiences.

The result is a sample of 10 users equally split between vendor references and Linux user group volunteers. This was an experienced sample, with Linux installations ranging from 1 | 5 years, with sites ranging from a handful to over a thousand Linux machines. The vast majority focused Linux on the server, with several using Linux for desktops of UNIX developers. However, one of our respondents (Burlington) broke new ground with massive Linux client deployment.

The sample was also quite varied, with half the sample was small business, with the remainder almost equally split between midsize and large business. Significantly, almost half our sample (four respondents) ran enterprise-scale, mission-critical systems on Linux.

The obvious common thread is that the IT groups contacted for this survey already had UNIX backgrounds, and therefore, when it came to a choice between Microsoft and Linux, the decisions were obvious. What was significant was that in some cases, Linux was chosen over other UNIX alternatives, not only because it was cheaper, but because of its superior performance on entry-level platforms. In this section, we describe the backgrounds of each organization included in our survey.

Architectural Energy Corp. A 35-person architectural consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado. The company currently operates nearly 50 machines, including clients for each staff member plus specialized number crunching machines, an NT server for domain control of Windows clients, and four Linux servers to handle the bulk of file and print services, Internet, and technical computing. Because of the technical nature of their work, AEC's servers must handle about 100 GB|a lot for a small company. The Linux servers have been in production for about 18 months. The IT administrator learned Linux in college and persuaded his employer after a successful side-by-side test (comparing NT and Linux) for the company's Internet gateway.

BF Goodrich Avionics Systems. A 470-person business unit specializing in avionics equipment such as aircraft collision warning systems, the company uses Linux for non-critical functions such as DNS, email, Internet proxy server, and for some people, Corel's WordPerfect. The company has a mixed UNIX and Microsoft IT environment, with Epicor used as the UNIX-based ERP system. Not surprisingly, given that the organization already had UNIX staff for its enterprise system, checking out Linux wasn't a stretch. The first Linux box began operating over five years ago.

Burlington Coat Factory. This 300-store, national discount clothing retailer has always been on the front lines of UNIX technology, beginning with the migration of enterprise systems to a UNIX host in 1988. The company has a close relationship with Oracle. Unlike the rest of our sample, Burlington has migrated nearly 90% of its desktops to Linux over the past year (mostly at store sites and distribution centers) - currently about 1300 in all. The result is one of the largest Linux implementations anywhere. The driver was that the company was already looking for low-maintenance, thin client implementations which it could economically replace character terminals with GUI-based desktops across its geographically dispersed store sites. Today, Burlington runs Star Office, Sun's Java-based thin client, Microsoft Office-like desktop suite, ERP-related functions, and POS (point-of-sale terminal) data aggregation on pre-configured Dell Optiplex Pentium II machines.

Canadian National Railways. We contacted CNR for our introductory study last year. At the time, the $4 billion North American railway giant had one of the largest Linux installations that we came across, with about 40 Linux machines, providing the usual mix of Internet/network-related services (e.g., IP, DNS, DHCP) to 8000 users. While the installation hasn't changed over the last year, Linux may be threatened by IT management's initiative to make Windows 2000 the corporate standard.

Giant Industries. A $1 billion, Phoenix-based oil and gas refiner and marketer, with two refineries, 20 regional offices, and 200 retail locations, the company has become one of the more ambitious Linux adopters. It has deployed a 60-GB Oracle database server supporting several major enterprise applications, including HR/payroll, imaging, and refinery maintenance management. (Core enterprise financial systems are still on legacy VAXes.) The IT environment also includes SCO UNIX and HP-UX, along with NT. Overall, the company operates a half dozen Linux servers, which also provide various Internet services (DNS, proxy services, file and print sharing, Apache web server, etc.). The first Linux server entered production about a year ago. Because of its superior stability, the current plan is for Linux servers will displace NT from the data center.

NetLedger. With Linux having become heavily associated with Internet service providers, NetLedger is the closest example in our sample of a "typical" Linux adopter. The two-year old firm, which began offering services last summer, delivers an Internet-based accounting solution to small-midsize businesses for $4.95 monthly, per user. As a new company, NetLedger was one of the few in our sample to conduct a formal assessment before deciding on Linux as their enterprise platform. The first decision was to adopt UNIX; with that issue out of the way, the next was platform selections. The company benchmarked Oracle on two comparable platforms: a 500-MHz Pentium II running Linux vs. a 440-MHz Sun Netra T running Solaris. The Intel/Linux platform proved half the cost and much faster than the Sun/Solaris alternative. Today the company runs the largest instance of Oracle on Linux anywhere, with hundreds of VA Linux boxes in standalone, failover mode in its server farm (a few obligatory NT servers are used for running QuickBooks reports for customers). Over the next year, NetLedger expects to grow its farm to thousands of Linux servers.

Scheduling Systems Inc. The smallest company in our sample (with just a 12-person staff), Scheduling Systems develops UNIX-based real-time aircraft scheduling software which accepts data from ground-based radar systems. As a UNIX shop, adoption of Linux was logical. The firm's systems administrator began using Linux as a hobbyist six years ago, and when he joined the company two and a half years ago, persuaded the firm to adopt Linux as the development environment because of its superior support for Intel-based laptops. Once BEA released a Linux version of Tuxedo, the leading UNIX-based transaction monitor, they also made Linux the database platform. Today, the staff develops on Linux, and recompiles the application for the specific UNIX target platform (HP or Sun) before it is released to the customer.

Swarthmore College. The 1400-student college, located near Philadelphia, uses Linux for the usual mix of Internet-related services, including DNS, DHCP, UseNet, file sharing, and network traffic monitoring. A mixed IT environment, which also includes Digital UNIX (enterprise servers), NT, and Mac servers, Swarthmore currently uses 15 Linux servers, placing its first one into production three years ago. In the coming year, they plan to add a visual SQL database query tool (Graphical SQL). Although they currently monitor traffic to subnets and servers, using an open source tool (MRTG), a major limitation is the lack of Linux versions for managing Cisco network devices.

Unique Systems Inc. A 10-year old, Ohio-based systems integration firm that began life as a reseller of an Informix-based accounting application, the company currently writes custom applications and provides UNIX/Linux systems administration services. The company has had four years of Linux experience, beginning with servers handling the familiar mix: Internet (firewalls, and email ), file and print, and high capacity remote communications services. A couple years ago the company began implementing Linux clients (thin desktops and self-contained laptops) serving ApplixWare, WordPerfect, and enterprise accounting and database applications. Additionally, as part of their consulting practice, they develop and implement Linux-based accounting and plant floor applications.

ZMI. A Chicago-based provider of statistical analysis services to Fortune 50 companies, this $30 million firm is performing number-crunching using a Java-based application on about two dozen Linux/Intel Pentiums, using internally-developed clustering that will soon be contributed to the open source community. The databases typically average 300 MB; the system was designed to handle databases up to ten times as large. Although ZMI had to develop its own clustering extensions for Linux, the strategy was to use off-the-shelf technology as much as possible to build an economical solution that was also highly reliable because their high-end clientele demanded it. Future plans call for scaling the cluster up to 150 nodes.

LINUX SOURCES

There are many ways to get Linux. Unlike conventional, proprietary software, which must be purchased or leased from software vendors or resellers, Linux is open source. Therefore, you have several alternatives, including (see Figure 1):

1. Downloading from the Internet, at the cost of time and the price of bandwidth. As for technical support, you rely on the Linux community at large. Among our sample, this was the least popular approach, with only one respondent choosing this option.
2. Purchasing CD/ROMS pressed by third parties that eliminate the time and hassle of Internet downloads for the nominal price of pressing, shipping, and handling. Again, support is from the Linux community. Four respondents chose this route.
3. Purchasing shrink-wrapped Linux distributions, complete with CDs, documentation, and varying levels of support from sources such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, TurboLinux, or Corel. Two respondents actually bought a shrink-wrapped copy, using it to have as a reference (complete with documentation) which was then deployed on multiple machines.
4. Purchasing bundled Linux hardware and/or services from sources such as VA Linux, Penguin Computing, or any of the major PC providers (IBM, Compaq, and Dell are already selling Linux PCs, and in some cases, introducing service packages). Three respondents took the bundled approach; significantly, they were the sites with the most extensive Linux implementations.

Half of our sample considered it advisable to either buy Linux as part of a formal service or platform bundle, or at least purchase one copy for reference.

When it came to services, the operating maxim is that you get what you pay for. In the Linux community that could be a great deal because the community places high value on communications. Indeed, when we first posted a mailing to Linux user groups looking for respondents for this report, we were inundated with responses within hours. "I could go to any user or news group and get the necessary support," said Jeff Norton, technical director for ZMI, who also heads the Chicago Linux Users Group. He added that "those 'platinum' support programs from vendors like Compaq are for entry level folks." In many cases, respondents claimed that the Internet was far faster or more reliable, often providing answers to technical questions, sometimes within minutes after they were posted to UseNet groups or other mailing lists.

Yet, we also found that three out of four organizations using Linux for enterprise systems did acquire Linux as part of a platform and/or services bundle. (ZMI was the only member of this group that did not pay for support.) In each case, the systems were truly mission-critical, with downtime not an option. One was a service business: NetLedger, which is an ASP. The other two (Burlington Coat Factory and Giant Industries) relied on Linux for some of their enterprise applications. But again, this was packaged support with a twist - each organization also used informal consultations with other Linux community members to answer any nagging issues. In fact, this practice isn't all that unique - users of packaged software products often compare notes with user group colleagues as well.

FUNCTIONALITY

Linux got its popularity providing Internet gateways, and that was reflected in our sample. The vast majority of installations here focused Linux on Internet-related services, including mail servers and web servers (thanks the popularity of open source programs SendMail and Apache, respectively), name (DNS) servers, and file and print services. But we also found the beginnings of enterprise deployment, with Burlington's STAR Office Linux desktops, Giant's Oracle-based HR and payroll systems, and NetLedger's ASP installation.

While we saw a few examples of Linux breaking into the data center, its scalability remains comparable to NT. Like NT, the current 2.2 distribution supports up to two processors, but can be clustered. Not surprisingly, Burlington doesn't plan to move its UNIX enterprise applications to Linux anytime soon, according to system administrator Tim Brennan. He noted that Linux does not yet support the 64-bit, cc:NUMA architecture of their Sequent UNIX machine.

It's clear that clustering is at the edge of the envelope; as noted earlier, ZMI plans to contribute its Linux clustering tools to the open source community. (It will be interesting to see what results from IBM's recently announced Linux supercomputing project at the University of New Mexico; at this point, IBM has not yet committed itself to releasing clustering extensions to the Linux community.)

At the other end of the spectrum, NetLedger is operating hundreds of machines, but in standalone mode. Although NetLedger wrote failover scripts to provide high availability, for its purposes, clustering was overkill. "We could very easily run our programs for parallel processing. [However] clusters add a level of complexity that gives no additional benefit," said Andrew Daniels, operations manager.

A key point to understand is that Linux itself only refers to the operating system kernel. In fact, most commercial distributions often package other open source tools including household names like Apache, GUIs such as KDE or Gnome, or specialized tools such as NetSaint (IP network traffic monitoring), PERL support, Bind (DNS services) and web scripting tools such as Python or Java. Commercial distributions, such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, et al differentiate themselves in part by the types of tools and installation wizards packaged.

For the limited purpose of Internet gateways, most respondents were quite satisfied with the availability of open source tools that support Linux, but there were a few gaps. For instance, Architectural Energy, bought a $500 high-speed backup tool because its technical computing requirements dictated the need for rapid access to data from large archival files. Swarthmore hit a wall when it came to managing Cisco routers because Cisco's own tools were not available in Linux.

Given that major IT vendors from CA to Oracle and SAP are beginning to realize the need to have Linux versions of their products available, we believe that this will prove a short term problem. For instance, NetLedger has seen Oracle gradually get its act together when it came to Linux support. According to Dave Durkee, NetLedger CIO, Linux was originally the last port to get the latest Oracle database features, ranking even below OS/2 on the list. But he's seen a change over the past six months.

MAINTENANCE

A distinguishing feature of Linux is the mad pace of innovation. The nature of open source development is that community members are constantly contributing new features to the OS, with Torvalds acting as the gatekeeper for official releases. Not surprisingly, many Linux users operate in eternal beta test mode. The result is a dividing of the Linux community into two camps: open source developers who write and test all the new Linux features or fixes, and those that would rather not fix something that wasn't broke.

Although one respondent admitted that staying in touch with Linux open source development consumed 25% of his time, for our sample, that was clearly the exception to the rule. Most stuck with existing distributions unless a new feature such as a driver was needed. At one extreme, the DNS server at B.F. Goodrich has run the same Linux distribution for the past four years.
If you need a new Linux kernel, the entire file is only about 10 MB, which on an ISDN line takes about 15-20 minutes to download. Put that kernel on a current-generation Pentium, and it should take about another 10 minutes to compile.
The question is how much time is typically spent getting new patches or drivers. Evidently, not much. "We do not reload [Linux] for each new distribution update. [Otherwise] we'd be doing updates all the time," said Glenn Jacobson, president of Unique Systems.

Mean figures were on the order of about four hours, per machine, per year. Sample responses included:

* Scheduling Systems: IT administrator Masimo Morin retunes each of the company's 12 Linux machines every two months, spending about 3 | 4 hours overall per machine. This includes developer desktops/laptops and servers.
* Swarthmore: Linux kernels are retuned or upgraded on each of 15 machines every six months, spending about 20 minutes per machine.
* Unique Systems: Adding peripherals to a server and loading the drivers (if necessary) typically consumes from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours per incident.
* ZMI: The last Red Hat upgrade was deployed to two dozen machines from a single master source over two hours, using a UNIX shell script that took 20 minutes to write. Overall, the firm spends about 5% of its $500,000 IT budget maintaining the two dozen Linux machines which are the heart of its data center (the firm also maintains eight NT machines for the sales staff in the front office.)

Other than system upgrades, retuning, or adding peripherals, just about the only maintenance was not Linux-related. Most respondents indicated that they conducted no other planned maintenance activity. An exception was NetLedger, which estimated typical weekly windows of three hours, a figure the company expects to see decline with experience and as it optimizes system and application configurations.

Ironically, the single largest "maintenance" expense may be the time spent in keeping in contact with the open source community or staying up to date on the newest releases and extensions. That is a hidden cost of Linux, but also an optional one, if your system is already working fine and has the right drivers.

Otherwise, unplanned maintenance/outages were usually hardware-related, and often the result of overloading. Uptimes averaging 8 | 12 months without reboots were typical if the system images remained unchanged.

COSTS

So how does this translate to cost of ownership? Linux may be compact, inexpensive or free. Its high reliability translates to reduced maintenance. You're on the honor system - pay for it if you feel compelled. Linux has the air of free lunch to it, but like any OS platform there are structural costs - and savings.

To get a better idea, we examined the costs and savings of acquisition, maintenance activity, support, platforms, third party software, and labor.

Linux Acquisition. This breaks down to two factors: the OS and the tools that surround it.

Regarding the Linux OS, our sample was evenly divided between actual purchase vs. free or low-cost channels (e.g., simply buying a CD/ROM pressing for the convenience). We found that larger organizations in our sample tended to insist on formal purchase because of internal budget and procurement guidelines. (We're tempted to ask how consistently this policy is applied in practice. What proportion of large enterprises with formal software purchase policies are using Apache, the open source program that is the world's most popular web server?)

That makes the comparison a factor of paying anywhere from zero to $149.95 (for the Professional version of Red Hat, geared towards Internet servers) for Linux, or $1199 - $2000 for equivalent editions of Windows 2000 Server (either with 10 internal client licenses or the unlimited Internet Connector option).

At first glance, that gives Linux an apparent $1000 - $2000 cost advantage, per server. We'd suggest taking that figure with a grain of salt. Enterprise contracts introduce volume discounting that would certainly shave these differences. Additionally, unless the forthcoming federal case against Microsoft prohibits the practice, we believe that Microsoft would match Linux pricing if the open source OS ever became a serious threat to Windows 2000's market share. Therefore, the up front cost (or lack thereof) of Linux is not where the real savings are.

In the long run, we expect that mid-cap and larger enterprises will get Linux bundled onto their servers from the hardware supplier, such as Dell, Compaq, IBM, VA Linux, and others are already doing. That reinforces our impression that there will be relatively minor differences in upfront cost between Linux and Windows.

Although our analysis is primarily directed at servers, we believe that the same factors would impact client side OS pricing, especially if more organizations adopt initiatives similar to that of Burlington Coat Factory.

As for tools, it is difficult if not impossible to make true apples-to-apples comparisons, for the sake of determining cost or value. A major bone of contention by the US Department of Justice is that Microsoft bundles too much with Windows. As for Linux, the mix of tools available varies by vendor source, with the differences often compensated by the huge selection of open source tools available for free download.

The question is whether these open source tools are enterprise data center-ready. In our research we encountered isolated instances where Linux administrators felt compelled to buy third-party tools to get industrial-strength functionality, such as AEC's purchase of a $500 high-performance backup tool, or NetLedger's purchase of tools from commercial sources for its huge Linux server farm. In the long run, we expect major commercial tool vendors to introduce Linux versions. Will their pricing be any different because of the low-rent image of the Linux market? That's a subject for a future report.

Maintenance Activity. For the limited applications that Linux grew up with, it appears that maintenance tasks are token at best. Although the data that we received was anecdotal, it provided a useful glimpse at the amount of time that system administrators actually spent with their Linux systems. Furthermore, our sample had a significant proportion of sites that were using Linux for enterprise-critical applications.

As noted earlier, we estimated, on average, that Linux administrators were spending about four hours per machine per year for routine maintenance, making those costs negligible. Chances are, if you run an Oracle database on a Linux server, the vast majority of time will be devoted to maintaining Oracle, not the OS. It's also clear that, excluding the core community of Linux experimenters and hobbyists, IT administrators with day jobs don't spend more time checking the web for Linux news than any typical enterprise software user.

Support. In the traditional, proprietary software world, annual maintenance costs about 15-20% of the initial purchase price of the software. In return, your organization gets access to a toll-free support line staffed by Level 1 technicians, with varying guaranteed turnaround times for different levels of problems. In the Linux world, the tradition has been to send email or log into a chat room. Among our sample, paying for conventional support was the exception to the rule. Not surprisingly, those exceptions tended to represent the larger installations, where Linux was playing a central role in enterprise computing. We didn't get any specific numbers as to how much those organizations were paying for support.

Platforms. Because Linux is a compact OS, it makes only modest claims on system resources -thereby allowing IT shops to get away with lower platform costs. Anecdotal evidence is that Linux has provided new life to obsolete 386 and 486 machines, which can be locked away in a corner handling some niche function such as DNS. And for dedicated functions, such as Internet servers, you can get away with lower-cost appliances. Examples:

* While Unique Systems installs IBM Netfinity servers costing between $10-40,000 to serve accounting and plant floor applications, it installs $600 Terian appliances for Internet or other niche functions.
* ZMI has built a data center of two dozen machines, spending barely $30,000 for hardware in total. Of course, to get the most out of those machines, ZMI invested six staff weeks to build clustering extensions to Linux. Based on our generic estimate of $50/hour (burdened), that would amount to about $12,000. That, of course, can be an asset that is potentially far more lasting than the hardware itself, since it allows them to best utilize processing capacity and provide redundancy.
* Giant Industries benchmarked Oracle on Linux and NT, finding that a single Pentium 133 outperformed a four-way Pentium 200 running NT. Prior to the Linux installation, the Oracle-based payroll system often crashed due to lack of system resources. Consultants recommended doubling the number of NT servers to alleviate the bottleneck. Today, they use two four-way, VA Linux 500-MHz Pentium Xeons (approximate total cost: $70,000) to run a 60GB Oracle database for applications serving up to 400 named users. The same server bank also runs Apache, Samba (a Linux-Windows file exchange utility), printer services, and local directory services. According to Giant's Barry Trout, the system has plenty of headroom for growth, as CPU utilization with the current Oracle applications is quite low. If they based the applications in NT instead, Trout estimates they would have had to buy up to a half dozen dual-Pentium servers. We estimate that would have added roughly $70,000- $80,000 in hardware costs, plus require the services of another part-full time administrator (our estimate: an extra $30,000 - $50,000).
* NetLedger discovered that $3500 VA Linux boxes outperformed $7000 Solaris machines with Oracle. They are running hundreds of boxes, translating to platform savings of at least $300,000 (and that's probably a conservative figure).

Third-Party Software. Is Linux software cheaper than comparable versions on NT/Windows 2000 or UNIX? We have limited evidence here. According to prices cited by Unique Systems, costs of Linux desktop productivity applications range from $100/user for ApplixWare to $250/user for WordPerfect; of course, Sun's STAR office is available for free. That compares to costs of $250 - $500/user for various editions of Office 2000; admittedly, those prices are heavily discounted in large-scale Microsoft enterprise agreements. Our early hypothesis is that the cost of third-party packages for Linux is not necessarily cheaper than those for Windows - but that's a point that requires further research. We'll do a more detailed study in the future.

Labor. This is the Achilles Heel of Linux. The common thread across all of our 10 responding organizations is that the IT groups all had UNIX backgrounds. Yet, the available supply of UNIX professionals is far dwarfed by that for Microsoft - although in a tight IT labor market, the difference might be academic. Nonetheless, in our (accompanying) Windows 2000 spotlight report, we noted that the organization chose a Microsoft strategy because of the larger talent pool and because of the belief that payscales for UNIX talent was higher. According to RHI Consulting, the IT staff placement arm of Robert Half International, national average salary ranges are $51,250 - $75,500 for UNIX administrators and $42,000 - $64,750 for network administrators (which covers NT). We also conducted an unscientific sampling of job postings across the US, consulting listings from Monster.com, along with the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post. We found UNIX administrator salary ranges from $50,000 - $120,000, and NT Administrator ranges from $40,000 - $90,000.
Therefore, Linux shops may need to pay more for their administrators, but for far less work compared to NT, according to the feedback from our respondents. Therefore, it wouldn't pay to hire a UNIX administrator for the sole purpose of spending a few hours per month or year on Linux machines. Although the evidence from our survey group was that Linux requires little attention, if your organization adopts an OS, it should have someone with the skills to run it. That presents the following options:

* Large Organizations: There is flexibility here. In a large IT group chances are there is some UNIX talent that could tend to Linux servers for a tiny proportion of their time.
* Small-Midsize Organizations: The decision is more difficult, because the IT group is smaller, and might not necessarily have a ready pool of UNIX talent to draw upon. Here, adopting Linux may require the organization to make a strategic choice to embrace UNIX - or use an ASP.

THE LOOMING SHOWDOWN

Comparisons with NT are natural because both OSs have appealed to workgroup size installations. Until now, both Linux and NT were limited in scale to two processors; although, as Giant's experience attests, some Linux distributions are available that support larger configurations. Both Linux and NT have also supported limited clustering, with the bar now rising. The greatest differences were the sources of Linux's appeal: the open source vs. the traditional proprietary software model. However, despite the growing selection of open source software, until now, NT has had more applications written for it.

Going forward, in some ways, the Linux vs. Microsoft playing field is being leveled. Both are scaling up; Windows 2000 Advanced Server supports up to eight processors, and so will the forthcoming Linux 2.4, expected sometime this summer. Until now, Linux has been far more stable than NT. With Windows 2000, Microsoft is playing catch-up ball.

One thing that's not likely to change, however, is the modular architecture of Linux, where users can add or subtract functions as needed. With Windows, you get whatever Microsoft bundles in, with the result being a much fatter OS which claims more computing resources (admittedly, we don't know how large Linux would be if it had all the same features as Windows 2000 Advanced Server, but that's probably a moot point).

The obvious battle is with Windows 2000, but we suspect that many Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX shops may quietly shift resources towards Linux once household brand enterprise applications and tools are ported. We expect that most of the shift will come in the newer, less established e-commerce extensions of packages such as ERP or CRM.

For Microsoft shops, the Linux decision will be far more difficult. Linux offers a very attractive cost of ownership proposition, but that must be balanced against the pain and cost of migration. Sure, migrating to Linux servers does not have to affect Microsoft desktops, but on a practical level, if the shift is restricted to the servers alone, an organization must be prepared to migrate at least 10, 20, or more servers to justify the addition of a full-time Linux/UNIX administrator.

Linux clients, as demonstrated by Burlington Coat Factory, also promise huge cost of ownership benefits. And, thanks to STAR Office, Corel Office for Linux, and SCO's Tarantella (a web-based thin universal client alternative to Citrix MetaFrame), Linux is finally starting to attract critical mass software for the desktop.

Burlington implemented Linux desktops the right way, with locked-down desktops, carefully limited user environments (and application menus), and remote administration. Guess what? Microsoft is offering similar capabilities in Windows 2000. With the bundling of Terminal Services, remote desktop control, and Intellimirror (a feature that makes personalized desktops truly portable), Microsoft and Citrix offer attractive Windows terminal alternatives, which, although pricier up front, offer similar long-term TCO advantages. Given Microsoft Office's huge presence as the de facto standard business desktop, we believe that this will prove an uphill battle.

In coming months, we'll take a closer look at how third party software vendors are pricing their offerings for Linux.

JOYFUL BALKANIZATION

Here's the obvious IT nightmare: A product is running on the servers, but no vendor is responsible for it. In fact, anybody can change it. So the obvious question becomes: Is this any way to run an enterprise computing system?

As an open source operating system, Linux users are invited to change the source code as long as they submit them to the rest of the community for free use and revision. "Fragmentation is good to some degree," stated Linux Torvalds before a recent Linux conference. But, he distinguished between the "good" fragmentation, where new ideas are encouraged, vs. the "bad" fragmentation, where vendors differentiate simply to trap their own user bases.

Technically, Linux refers only to the OS kernel, which in most cases, is a small (although central) part of each distribution. For instance, tools such as GUIs, installation wizards, scripting, and systems management are not part of the Linux kernel, but often accompany it in commercial distributions.

The formal distributions of Linux are managed by Torvalds, who controls the release schedule. The current version, Linux 2.2.x, is limited in scalability. You can cluster, but it does not support more than two processors in an SMP configuration. But gaps like this are what the open source is best at filling. At this point, we know of at least one version - a Red Hat distribution adapted by VA Linux|that will scale further. These distributions are supposed to be shared with the rest of the Linux open source community, which in turn has the chance to take any improvement and refine it further.

The upcoming "official" version, 2.4, is supposed to support up to eight processors through improvements to file system and network support. For current Linux users, this is often not an issue, either because the implementations are small or because functions such as failover or load balancing are incorporated into the application rather than the OS. In that sense, the Linux model is vastly different from Microsoft's.

How do you "get" Linux? You can buy it from a commercial distributor or you can download it for free off the Internet, or do just about anything in between. Prices are modest. Commercial distributors such as Red Hat put Linux and various tools on a CD/ROM, and sell it with bundled Level 1 support for anywhere between $49 - $129. But, since, by license provision, commercial distributors are obligated to make their Linux code freely available, in many cases you can either download it for free or buy it from a reseller that simply packages it on a CD/ROM for less than $20 per copy.

But here's the interesting catch - and the clue by which enterprise Linux will become inevitable. Just because you have an OS that changes rapidly doesn't mean that you always have to download the latest distribution. Linux is so modular and remarkably stable that, as long as you're satisfied with the distribution you have, there's no need to change it. Furthermore, the open source nature of the OS and many of its surrounding tools does not prevent major IT vendors from packaging Linux services.

Admittedly, there are still potential hurdles when it comes to getting new drivers. But this seems a relatively minor and solvable hurdle.

Admittedly, our conclusions about a new form of "managed" Linux that is supported through conventional means is currently not a popular model in the Linux community. Most of the users whom we surveyed in this report considered such formalized offerings unnecessary.

Table 1. Survey sample (Source: Computer Finance)

Company	Company size	Industry sector	IT environment	Linux machines	Linux applications/ Functions
Architectural Energy Corp.	Small	Engineering Services, Software	Linux servers; NT Servers and clients	4	Internet services, mass data storage, and print services
BF Goodrich Avionics Systems	Midsize	Electronics	UNIX and Linux servers, Windows clients	6	Internet services, file and print services
Burlington Coat Factory	Large	Retail	UNIX servers, Linux clients	1300	STAR Office, access to enterprise apps.
Canadian National Railways	Large	Transportation	Mainframe, midrange, UNIX, NT, and Linux servers; NT and Windows clients	40	Internet services, file and print services
Giant Industries	Large	Energy	Mainframe, midrange, UNIX, and Linux servers; NT and Windows clients	6	HR, Payroll, Maintenance Management, Image Processing
NetLedger	Small	Internet ASP	Linux data center with several NT servers	100+	Business Accounting
Scheduling Systems Inc.	Small	Software	Linux servers, UNIX clients, and Linux clients	12	Internet, file and print, application development
Swarthmore College	Small	Education	Midrange, UNIX, Windows, Mac, Linux	15	Internet services, file and print services
Unique Systems	Small	IT Services	UNIX and Linux servers, Linux and Windows clients	100+	Internet, file and print, communications, accounting, office servers and desktops
ZMI	Midsize	Services	Linux data center, NT front office server and clients	25	Statistical Forecasting

 

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