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The Economist on The Rise of Linux
nickco3 writes "The Economist is telling the business world that Linux is a worthy adversay to Windows and Unix. It is free, runs on almost any hardware, and generally more secure than Windows As result it is dividing the industry into winners that offer Linux (e.g. IBM and HP), and losers that don't, (e.g. Microsoft). Sun is probably doomed."
Sun really needs to rethink their strategies.
Solaris for Intel? None of the sparc binaries run on it, it's not any faster than linux. Linux 1, Solaris 0.
Solaris for web applications... absoultely not. Tried and true OS for sure. Though web sphere, atg, web logic and most other large scale app servers have linux ports. java's relability will never exceed the uptime of an OS i.e. the JVM or app server will crash before the OS does. That then precludes having a bullet proof OS. Web applications need redunancy, both from a geographic perspective and application. Doing so requires a duplicate hardware investment. Not such a good deal with sun. Linux 2, Solaris 0.
Maintainance... will be cheaper with linux rather than solaris. The reason being that Linux and it's friendly varients are all freely avaialable. To learn and use linux is not a big deal, solaris on the other hand need solaris hardware to run. As a result of easier access to hardware and software (linux) labor costs go down because the skill sets require to administer and maintain linux and linux apps are more freely available. The same is not true of solaris. Linux 3, Solaris 0.
Solaris, and it's hardware IS good for massive multi-proc applications. Data Warehouse with Multi-tera bytes of data? Linux and Intel are not suited to such tasks. Large transactional databases that require nearly 100% uptime and reliability, i.e. the database is nearly as reliable as the Operating system. Solaris is the OS for that application. Linux 3 Solaris 1
Sun is no longer suited to playing in the high(er) growth markets of dedicated servers, web applications, IT support devices (dns, dhcp, network management) and such. Their role is increasingly being boxed into ultra highend applications where a large number of processors, ultra high reliability and what sun has stood for still means something. Where the applications are almost as reliable as the OS, and that the OS and hardware is required to be up nearly 100% of the time and never unexpectedly. The difficulty they face is that that the role just described is not in particularly high demand. As IT budgets continue to shrink - decision makers are going to continue to look to linux to solve their problems.
Linux is cheap - costs less to maintiain - and the hardware can be repurposed. Sun just can't argue with that. Sun needs a change of direction.
MS is really doing less and less right. They are increasingly getting more greedy with their licenses. There security is to be laughed at. And every three years they release a rehash of the same old product.
Eventually, (and soon), Linux will have the usability that 51% of the population will find acceptable, and it will landslide from there. There will be no reason to pay for Windows XY or Office YX. Software companies will start producing the little annoying things that exWindows users like for Linux, and everyone will be happy.
Just wait until MS starts writing software for Linux. That will be a funny day.
Traditionally, the Economist has been one of the earliest media outlets to get technology. The first printed press reference to the Internet outside the tech press is from the Economist, ditto for Linux, but this time around they are way off the mark.
The reason Linux is so popular is not that is free. BeOS is also free. Linux is successful due to convergence of many different factors:
(1) Free
(2) Open source
(3) Unix compatible
(4) X-windows (X11) compatible
(5) designed for x86 (yes it runs on many other chips, still Linux is an x86 project from the get go)
(6) Multiple vendor supported
(7) Plenty of third party support
Moreover each of these things feed of each other. That is why Linux is so popular.
I give up. What is Apache a clone of? I wish they had included an actual quote on this. Maybe the journalist was "interpreting".
Most of the article is on target though. The easy way to evaluate the strengths of the companies mentioned is to look at how diversified they are (or aren't).
IBM is no longer primarily a hardware company. They have a strong consulting division, they do fundamental research and grab pattents on REAL things (rather than new parsing algorithms like some companies I can think of), they have a very strong software development component, they farm out hardware manufacturing that is no longer profitable (disk drives) while hanging on to things that they do best and can make money on (chip fabrication).
Sun is primarily a hardware company. Their operating systems are (almost) exclusively sold to customers who use their hardware. Java and Star Office are far from being cash cows. Their weakness is that as Intel, AMD, etc, chips get cheaper there is less incentive to use Sun's higher priced hardware components. Supporting Linux helps them a bit, but it is the price of their hardware that puts them at a disadvantage.
Microsoft is a software company. They are trying real hard to become something else too, but like Sun they are having a heck of a time making anything else work. They don't really do fundamental research, but instead try and grab patents on programming concepts so that they can bully other companies in court when it suits them. They don't really make any hardware, but instead stamp their logo on a few things to make it seem that they do. They do select good subcontractors for mice and keyboards, I'll grant them that. Everything they do except Windows and Office lose money. Prospects for either of those (because they are already so successful) can only go down. They currently have a scatter shot approach to the "next big thing" which consists of trying everything at once and seeing if any of it takes off. Few companies have the money to do this. But they will bleed themselves dry rather quickly if they are not carefull. Something tells me they are not going to be carefull.
Apple is trying to diversify too. Since they are starting small the only way they have to go is up. It would be nice to see them further popularize the power-pc server. My personal experience with OS X is that they are rushing versions of it out the door too fast. I've decided to wait for XI (or whatever they call it) and switched to running Linux on my iBook. Those gel buttons are cute though.