Linux Is on a Mission
THE I.S. DEPARTMENT at Grede Foundries, a $600-million-a-year metals company in Milwaukee, was stuck with an IBM 390 mainframe. After years of developing skills on the big iron, changing business needs forced a move to the Web, which shifted Grede's dependence to Unix and Windows NT servers. Soon the little boxes were multiplying faster than rabbits, and the mainframe-focused shop was moving further away from its traditional strength.
To stop the bleeding, Grede's Manager of Operations Rich Smrcina installed Linux on the old system, which now runs Web, file, mail and other serving tasks in the hope that doing so will let Grede consolidate the functions of the proliferating NT and Unix boxes. Best of all, the company's programmers can't tell the difference. "The image now of the mainframe is all the gray beards hunkering around the green screen," says Smrcina. "Well, I'm not gray, I don't have a beard, and I don't use a green screen anymore. I could show you a terminal session, and you wouldn't have a clue it was a mainframe -- [Linux] is that good of a port."
Underground Growth
Grede isn't the only Linux success story. While some contend that Linux has made headlines but little else, evidence suggests that Linux is finding a niche -- and quite possibly a large one. A poll of 2,092 IT professionals by Survey.com reveals that more than 68 percent of companies have or intend to deploy at least one Linux system. And according to IDC (a sister company to CIO's publisher, CXO Media), Linux was second in server operating environment by shipments last year with 24 percent of the market.
Yet when IDC sized the operating environment market at $11 billion, Linux's share was a mere $60 million -- just a rounding error away from zero percent. Windows had higher revenues in the first three days of 1999 than the entire Linux market had all year.
Of course, rating freebie Linux by sales dollars against operating systems that cost thousands may not provide the most accurate picture of the market, but the comparison does have merit. "When someone is going to pay $3,000 for a Windows NT or Windows 2000 license, you can bet she is going to use it," says IDC Program Vice President Dan Kuznetsky. "If she pays $2 or even $50 or $150 for a Linux package, that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to get used -- or it could mean it was used 1,000 times by the organization. We just don't know how to count that."
Support Issues
Such enumeration problems leave Linux to rely more on anecdotes than statistical analysis to measure its success, but according to Kuznetsky, few companies use Linux for mission-critical systems yet. Understandably, CIOs want to know that their crucial software will be supported, and relying on an unpaid programmer community for that support is a risk not many have been willing to take. And Linux support organizations such as LinuxCare have found it tough going
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