IT organisations go Linux as economy dives says survey

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 17 March 2009 05:33

Opinion and Analysis

“The feedback gleaned from this market survey confirms our belief that, as organizations fight to cut costs and find value in this tough economic climate, Linux adoption will accelerate,” said Markus Rex, general manager and senior vice president for Open Platform Solutions at Novell.

“Companies also told us that strengthening Linux application support, interoperability, virtualization capabilities and technical support will all fuel adoption even more.”

Additional key survey findings include:

·         67% of respondents stated that interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows is one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system.

·         The retail industry showed the greatest potential for acceleration in Linux adoption with 63% of respondents planning an increase on the desktop and 69% considering the same on the server. The government sector lagged.

·         Almost 50% of respondents plan to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop, especially for basic office functions, technical workstation users, and higher education/K-12.

·         Nearly half of respondents stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight% of recipients plan to evaluate, deploy or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months

·         From a regional perspective, Asia/Pacific is the most bullish on increasing Linux adoption, as 73% of respondents said they would increase deployments on the server and 70% on the desktop. In the Americas, 66% of respondents said they are either evaluating or have already decided to increase adoption of Linux on the desktop and 67% on the server.

·         The economic crisis has had the biggest effect on the Americas, and in financial services and government. More than 62% of respondents said that their budget has been cut or that they are only investing where needed.

“Economic downturns have the tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions and punish solutions that are not cost competitive,” said Al Gillen, program vice president, system software, IDC.

“This survey confirms that Linux users view it favorably, and this view places Linux in a competitive position to emerge from this downturn as a stronger solution.”

Among the survey participants, 55% had Linux server operating systems in use, 39% had Unix server operating systems in use, and 97% had Windows server operating systems in use. Typical respondents had titles such as CIO, VP IT, IT Director, IT Manager, IT Staff, and IT Consultant. Respondents were pre-screened via demographics screeners and completed the survey online. Novell was not involved in recruiting, and respondents did not need to be Novell customers.

An IDC white paper1 summarizing the survey findings can be found  here.