| Desktop Linux Breaking Ground |
by Tom Adelstein (Aug. 12, 2003)
Desktop Linux started gaining momentum in 2002. Only nine months later, Linux potential looks very real. While some critics take a cynical view, the record does not prove them correct. DesktopLinux.com Contributing Editor Tom Adelstein discusses where the Linux desktop has experienced growth and some upcoming launches to keep your eye on.
Desktop Linux Breaking Ground
by Tom Adelstein
Red Hat
The most intriguing prospects for Desktop Linux may wait in the halls of Raleigh-based Red Hat. Analysts and Linux observers have labeled Red Hat an infrastructure and server company. Management has guided the company like a good mutual fund manager. Don't count them out of the Desktop market where they will more likely dominate the field.
The chief spokesperson for the leading Linux Company recently explained Red Hat's position. Leigh Day said that Linux would become ready for desktop competition when anyone can plug any device like a video camera into the computer and it will work. Just like Apple's OS X? Yes, she told me, just like OS X.
Leigh also confirmed stories I read about Red Hat abandoning the retail market. She explained that Red Hat changed its personal Linux distribution to a development community. Red Hat wants its desktop to benefit from the latest technology advances in the open source community. As Doc Searls commented, "so that Linux will have all the device drivers of its competitors."
Take a Bite of this Apple
The success of Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X proved that UNIX works on the desktop. OS X also demonstrated that sophisticated customers, who wouldn't consider using Microsoft Windows, would still buy products known widely to Windows users.
Apple's success sets a precedent for Linux desktop deployment. We now know that companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, Real Networks, Intuit, Symantec, and others have offerings for UNIX. One can only speculate why they don't build such products for Linux. Knowing they run on a Mac speaks volumes to Linux users.
Apple's own successful excursion into UNIX with OS X has eased the concern people had for Desktop Linux. One could say that Apple has given Linux a proof of concept.
Linux and Intel
Desktop Linux has a strategic advantage over Mac OS X since it runs on the Intel platform. With the availability of Intel hardware and devices, Linux will more likely than not surpass Apple's desktop market share. Linux can replace Microsoft Windows without a need to change hardware configurations. That puts Linux on the cusp of grabbing market share.
IBM
From the IBM perspective the critical factors driving Linux growth include adoption by reference accounts, users' access to product, new market drivers and unprecedented innovation.
Linux Desktops Playing a Critical Part in Big Enterprise
Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin, a major aerospace player in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area asked for a four-hour seminar for a desktop deployment group. The subject matter would focus on an introduction to Linux. The specifications did not indicate the level of sophistication of the audience.
Eventually, I spoke to procurement's customer. After a brief discussion, the customer said that the team needed help in deploying 28,000 Linux desktops. The customer felt that four hours would provide the desktop deployment team enough time to get their questions answered. After all, Lockheed Martin refers to itself as a Red Hat shop. They have large numbers of MCSE and RHCE certified employees. They just need a little help, the manager explained.
In this example, a couple of important points exist. First, the decision to use Linux has migrated from the techie side of the house to business management. In the past, I have maintained that until management starts studying the business case, Linux will never get past the Microsoft Exchange administrators. With the current economy, management has to look at every cost savings available. Linux looks very attractive on a "no money down" basis.
Secondly, IBM VARS and consultants have a large, addressable market to regain momentum in the technology sector. In some ways, this opportunity reminds me of the year 2000 phenomenon. Ignoring Linux as the predominant desktop solution provides little, if any growth in the economy. As more knowlegable politicians know, job growth requires an engine. Linux deployment provides such an engine.
Demand Drives Desktop Linux
Interest in Linux Desktops has gone from mild to serious consideration in many organizations as witnessed by product portfolio managers at IBM. Yes, some very executive Executives at IBM may consider themselves a services and server provider. That's last year's story. IBM executives about whom some journalists write are often the last to know. Product portfolio managers at IBM have very tight lips especially inside the Company.
What's Really Happening?
Global enterprises considering the decision to cut over to Linux go to IBM for advice. Did someone think they would consult Microsoft? When a product or service offering becomes "live" at IBM, internal teams inform the executives and sales people about those offerings. So, that's why Anne's executives merely recite the corporate line from IBM's 2002 initiatives.
The IBM service organization provides their customers with what the customer wants. In marketing, we call this a pull. The original decision to make Linux available at IBM came from a "customer" groundswell of demand.
The "groundswell" momentum at IBM turned the corner when Lou Gerstner decided to invest one billion dollars in Linux. After losing some large deployments to the new H.P., IBM under Sam Palmisano will not allow his Global Services group to lose many more.
When IBM decides to offer a product and/or service they don't just make mere gestures. They become the absolute best. Consider the industry and ask yourself who has made the largest investment in Linux. Whose built centers of competency, research facilities, benchmarking labs, trained everyone in the company and created acceptance of Linux? Was it Dell, Sun or Compaq? The answer, of course, is IBM.
Deployment of the Bluecurve interface in Red Hat 9 occurred very close to a time IBM Global Services began taking a serious look at Linux offerings. Earlier in 2003, I visited with Peter Neilsen who owned the Linux portfolio for IBM Global Services. He assured me that Global Services became serious about Desktop Linux in calendar year 2002.
The Infrastructure Play
Early in 2001, analysts began acknowledging Linux's server gains in the market. With availability from IBM on the zSeries and S/390 mainframes, Linux as a server platform gained a considerable endorsement. Since IBM had not embraced the Linux desktop, industry analysts began to conclude that the desktop succumbed to Microsoft.
Sherwin-Williams' purchase of 9700 IBM desktop personal computers running Linux for its 2500-plus stores gave us a hint of a shift in the winds in mid-2002. One might consider such an order and deployment a milestone "10,000 unit sale". You can easily say it's pretty close.
Surprisingly, other computer manufacturers continued to see steady sales of Linux workstations for science, engineering and laptops used for software development thanks to IBM.
Hewlett Packard
Walt Disney Feature Animation selected HP's Linux-based workstations and servers as components in its next-generation digital animation production pipeline. Walt Disney Feature Animation chose HP's Linux infrastructure to give artists more powerful tools to translate their artistry into animation while achieving significant cost reductions.
I only mention these two cases to emphasize the impact of Desktop Linux. You can find a large body of cases at various OEM web sites mentioning their Linux wins.
Mainstream Users Finding Linux Acceptable
Today, you can see knowledge workers using Linux instead of the traditional Win32 platforms in many different environments. For example, call centers have a significant appetite for Linux, as does Government, Health Care and major manufacturing.
Linux desktop advocates inside large organizations almost universally point to compelling Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) studies. They also point to the fact that Linux is now good enough to deploy. In these cases, the companies did their own TCO's using their own situations.
Sun, Novell and Sony
David Becker, a staff writer for CNET's News.com wrote in December 2002: "By the end of the year, Sony will include version 6.0 of StarOffice on most consumer desktop PCs sold in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, according to Sun. Microsoft's Works package is currently used on most of those PCs.
"The deal makes Sony the first top-tier PC maker to use StarOffice and marks another dent in Microsoft's dominance of office applications, a market led by Works and its more expensive business-oriented sibling, Microsoft Office.
"StarOffice, Sun's commercial distribution of its open-source OpenOffice package, includes a word processor, spreadsheet application and other common office tools. It has become one of Sun's most visible efforts to erode Microsoft's dominance over PC computing.
In Becker's article mentioned earlier, he quotes Rob Enderle, an analyst for research firm Giga Information Group: "Sun has the potential to steal a bit of market share from Microsoft. But the real loser as Sun advances is financially troubled Corel.
"In the first half of the year, we saw a lot of moves by Corel," he said. "Now, Sun seems to be collecting all that non-Microsoft activity."
"This positions Sun directly against Corel," Enderle added, "and Sun's in a much better position to fight this battle. Sun really has to push Corel out to take a good shot at Microsoft. They need to get all of the alternative business."
Additionally, Sun has picked up accounts that Corel won earlier in the year. Analysts seemed impressed that Corel managed to crack Dell (Computer) and (Hewlett-Packard)...and really give Microsoft a poke in the eye."
When Corel and Vector Capital announced that they have signed a definitive acquisition agreement, Enderle became a confirmed profit.
The Corel and Vector agreement provides for the acquisition by Vector of all of the outstanding common shares of Corel. The proposed transaction is subject to shareholder and court approval. If approval is granted, Corel's shareholders will receive US $1.05 in cash for each common share held.
With Novell moving to a Linux platform, their purchase of Ximian looks like a Desktop play. Desktop Linux benefits from its association with StarOffice.
This may seem minor to some observers. Back in the early 1990's, people considered Microsoft a minor threat to WordPerfect and Novell. Some might consider Novell's entry into desktop market a fair turnaround.
White Box Computer Manufacturers
To start, don't underestimate or write-off white box manufacturers. Even Dell has begun working on a white box line loaded with Linux. If history repeats itself and many of us believe it does, the 95% owner of a market can fall very quickly. We can go back just 15 years and look at what happened.
In the 1980's, IBM completely owned the market for P.C. Hardware. With its pedigree name, IBM had a market share in the 90% range. Somewhat obsessed with maintaining its ownership of the market, the Company became concerned about competition from Compaq and a few clone manufacturers.
IBM invented and launched its micro channel architecture (MCA) in 1987, the same year Compaq's revenue hit $1 billion. IBM said that MCA attempted to address the problems that had come to plague the PC bus.
IBM saw another problem. It's XT and AT architecture later known as Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) had spawned a cottage industry. Deeply linked to the Intel 8088 CPU architecture, cards built for ISA would simply not work in any other machine.
In response to IBM's attempt to lead the fledging PC industry down the road to Micro Channel Architecture, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) formally documented standards governing "ISA" in 1987. Thus, the 16-bit implementation received official recognition.
Aside from Compaq, a group of small clone or white box manufacturers worked together to form a consortium, which adopted the IEEE Industry Standard Architecture. With its standards in place, a number of companies jumped on the bandwagon to form what we now call the PC industry.
IBM lost its market share and 15 years later, what had been a small computer shop in Austin benefiting from ISA standards is now the largest personal computer company in the world: Dell Computers.
Wal-Mart, Fry's SuperStores and TigerDirect offer 20+ separate models of white box computers with three versions of Linux. Microtel offers Lycoris/LX, Mandrake and Lindows. Fry's added numerous Intel and AMD models of GQ with ThizLinux, a Red Hat derivative customized for each GQ model. TigerDirect spawned an in-house line of computer systems known as Wintergreen. All use AMD and Intel Celeron and Pentium IV processors
You might think about the Microsoft monopoly as you consider the moral of the IBM story. If the unthinkable could happen to IBM in the PC market, it could happen to Microsoft. Consider today's news: A federal jury awarded a Chicago-based software company and the University of California more than $520 million in damages after finding that Microsoft Corp.'s popular Internet Explorer browser infringed on a patent.
How do you like those Apples?
About the author: Tom Adelstein works as a Linux consultant in Dallas, Texas. His current interest lies in the field of web services, security and supporting Linux deployments. Tom is involved in the launch of Government Forge -- a website devoted to state and local government interest in Linux and open source.
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