ITWire

The study, conducted by IDC in February 2009 and sponsored by Novell (let's not leave that bit out), surveyed more than 300 senior IT executives spanning manufacturing, financial services, and retail industries across the globe, as well as government agencies.

The survey reveals that more than half of the IT executives surveyed plan to accelerate Linux adoption in 2009.

In addition, more than 72% of respondents say they are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009.

Perhaps even more is that more than 68% of IT executives are also making the same claim for the desktop.

The number one motivation executives gave for migrating to Linux was economic and related to lowering ongoing support costs.

As a consequence, more than 40% of survey participants said they plan to deploy additional workloads on Linux over the next 12-24 months and 49% indicated Linux will be their primary server platform within five years.

Notably, however, those who are hesitant to adopt Linux cited lack of application support and poor interoperability with Windows and other environments as their primary concerns.

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