By Doc Searls
At Linux World Expo in August 1999, I met with some IBM folks who conveyed the company's cautious interest in the operating system. Linux had been arriving "over the transom", they said, showing up significantly (though non-strategically) in servers all over the company. So IBM did a survey of one division, testing Linux "awareness" on a scale that ran from "can spell Linux" at one end and "hacks kernel code" at the other. All 600 surveyed could spell Linux, and 120 were hacking kernel code. It was a revelation that no doubt informed the company's strategic commitment to the OS.
Now it's 2.5 years later, and Linux is a mainstream operating system. That was the summary news story from the latest Linux World Expo (just completed as I write this).
IBM showed off marquee customers L.L.Bean, Boscov, Pixar and Solomon Smith Barney. Hewlett-Packard showcased Dreamworks SKG. Egenera reported a deal with Credit Suisse First Boston.
In her keynote at LWE, Carly Fiorina of HP said 2002 would be a "breakout" year for Linux, pointing to a Gartner projection of 15% growth, despite the economic downturn. HP also announced Linux products for enterprise and telecommunications customers, showcasing Amazon, BMW, Boeing, Speedera, ViaWest and Verizon.
Also at LWE, Holger Dyroff of SuSE said, "Up to now Linux was adopted by technicians. Now it's exactly the opposite". CIOs are placing orders for SuSE support contracts on IBM mainframes at a rate of 2-3 purchase orders per week and $4,500-$11,500 per contract. About one third of the customers for the mainframe distribution, which has been out for about a year and a half, are banks, Dyroff said.
IBM also introduced a special bargain price on a "Linux-only" version of its flagship zSeries (better known as S/390) mainframe.
In fact, IBM, which famously bragged about spending $1 billion on Linux over the last year, now says it has recouped most of the investment. And it's hardly alone in its bottom-line enthusiansms for the operating system.
And the story goes way beyond what we saw at LWE.
Egenera is selling Linux-based servers ranging in price from $200,000 to more than $1 million.
Amazon.com recently moved its services to Linux, and credits the OS with enormous savings, no doubt contributing to that company's first profitable quarter.
Mary Anne De Young of 1image ("One Image") attributes the company's recent successes to a tremendous growth in demand for Linux as a UNIX product platform. One of 1image's largest customers, Reynolds & Reynolds, is both making and saving money by shipping its (and 1image's) products out to thousands of car dealers on Linux boxes.
John Gantz of International Data Corp. had enthusiastic words about Linux in his Top Ten Predictions for the New Year.
And if none of that makes a convincing case for the long-term commercial success of Linux, there's this from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:
"I think you have to rate competitors that threaten your core higher than you rate competitors where you're trying to take from them... It puts the Linux phenomenon and the Unix phenomenon at the top of the list. I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1."
Doc is senior editor of Linux Journal.