NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
The jury is still out on how Linux will build on its initial proliferation in the enterprise. Linux vendors have consolidated in search of solid ground, but IBM's incarnation of the penguin may portend success in tomorrow's high-speed networks. We asked industry experts how they expect Linux to reach its stride. Linux has demonstrated its worth at the server level and in clustering. In addition to being a robust operating system, its nonproprietary nature allows OEMs to tweak the architecture for resource-intensive applications and environments.
It also allows freedom of movement away from Microsoft -- something the industry has sought for quite a while. Network administrators report consistent performance advantages of Linux over Windows NT and 2000. It would be a wise move for Microsoft to make its application suites operational on Linux, as the Linux platform continues gaining market share and there remains a shortage of applications for it. We can expect Linux to continue gaining momentum in niche areas such as finance, telecommunications, Web hosting, applications service provision, and similar environments requiring high resilience and reliability. Linux will continue to attract developers in part because of its memory management capabilities, including process swapping, file buffering, and direct memory access (DMA); virtual file system and the second extended file system; and interprocess communication (IPC).
Linux will threaten but not replace Windows or Unix as the OS that corporations prefer in all server tiers through 2005. Linux will move through three phases of acceptance. In Phase 1, Linux battles for corporate credibility in network services, with early adopters enthused by Linux's robustness and low cost. In Phase 2, Linux gains durable roots -- particularly in Web servers and clustered server farms -- partly at the expense of Windows 2000 and costly Unix/RISC solutions. In Phase 3, ISV enthusiasm for Linux increases.
But Unix's mission-critical scalability and availability, strong Windows 2000 upgrades, and potentially heavy migration costs throttle broad ISV enthusiasm. Increased complexity and insufficient skills will also retard corporate acceptance. Success will get complicated and expensive for Linux distributors since value will come from an OS/middleware software stack and services. Most ISVs will commit resources only to the top two or three Linux distributions. Some Linux vendors will inevitably fail; others will merge or be acquired. IBM boldly stated that in 2001 Linux will surmount the chasm separating it from the enterprise.
If so, IBM is best positioned to capitalize. However, Linux faces multiple chasms (such as standards, ISV support, skills, scalability, and availability), any one of which could stop the show and leave IBM as the most exposed vendor. IBM will likely continue pushing Linux harder than corporations will accept and may have to adjust its enthusiasm to more rational levels. The dot-bust has sobered the dot-com speculative frenzy rather than condemned any technology.
Linux IPO makers did not suspect the lurking disaster. Today, Linux no longer guarantees a successful start-up and is often buried within the application context (for example, server appliances). That seems about right. Linux is valuable for what it enables you to do and is not an end in itself.
Forrester research sees Linux and open source software as the future of Internet-based software development. Even last year, 56 percent of large companies had some sort of open source software in-house, and that number is growing daily. We see three phenomena taking hold as Linux goes mainstream. A boom for hardware firms. Hardware firms such as IBM and HP love Linux because it removes OS costs from boxes such as firewalls and Web server appliances. With appliance makers able to take what they need and exclude what they don't, we see a Linux foundation for most computing appliances by 2005 -- and giants such as IBM, HP, and Dell will sell and support them.
Trouble for Windows XP and Microsoft. With the current economic downturn in the United States, nearly every company is looking for a way to save costs -- and few companies have an extra million dollars to spend on a wholesale Windows XP upgrade. Forrester predicts that Linux will displace nearly 15 percent of OS licensing revenues in the average company by 2004 -- mostly at the expense of Microsoft. More software developers.
Today, nearly every university in the world is teaching operating system development using Linux. With that educational foundation, more developers by 2005 will know how to install, configure, and change Linux than any other operating system -- and those developers will be the infrastructure buyers in corporations for the next 20 years. So the question isn't what Linux's future is; the question is rather what the future holds for Linux's competitors. The long-term viability of Linux is excellent even though there will be some distributors that do not generate large revenues and may even go by the wayside. The success of Linux is measured by the interest of (and revenue generated by) the system vendors -- Compaq, IBM, Dell, HP, VA Linux, SGI, and a few others. Sun is absent, of course, since they believe that Solaris offers anything that users want, even on the low end.
Sun is apparently willing to continue pouring money into developing Solaris over the long haul. While Sun has a Linux appliance strategy via Cobalt Networks, it does not have a serious Linux or IA- 64 strategy. My feeling is that system vendors such as Compaq, HP, and IBM, which develop and market RISC Unix platforms, will eventually tire of development costs for their proprietary systems and that in seven to eight years, Linux on IA- 64 will replace their RISC Unix platforms. I say this because these RISC Unix vendors have developed good Linux/Unix affinity strategies that allow Unix applications to run on Linux (and vice versa), thus paving a migration path from Unix to Linux. It is conceivable that Linux, coming from the low end, will leapfrog Windows and become the high-end replacement for Unix over the long term. This seems natural because of the aforementioned Linux/Unix affinity and because Unix-based installations are generally very comfortable with Linux.
Windows, however, will maintain a powerful position in the midrange. One of the keys to Linux moving toward the high end is the Open Source Development Lab in Portland, Oregon, which provides Linux developers with access to hardware systems for scaling Linux. The development of Linux over the next two to four years will change. Not to fear, Linux will continue to be an open source project. There is demand, especially from ISVs, for a standard Linux distribution. ISVs have long tired of porting their applications to multiple RISC Unix systems.
Even though distributions use the same kernel (possibly different versions of the kernel at any given time), the distributions are not the same. The real question is, how will the Linux community deliver a standard distribution? Red Hat believes that a standard distribution of Linux already exists: Red Hat Linux. Another possibility is to develop a standard Linux distribution through the Linux Standard Base (LSB) process. One development that may change the Linux landscape a bit is a potential face-off between Red Hat and Caldera.
Caldera, which recently completed the acquisition of SCO, is now the largest Linux distributor in terms of revenue (this may change, however, when Red Hat reaches the end of its fiscal year). Caldera appears to be the only roadblock preventing Red Hat Linux from becoming the de facto standard Linux distribution -- in case the LSB approach fails to produce a standard distribution. Caldera inherits SCO's large, worldwide reseller channel (more than 15, 000 resellers) and professional services / support organizations. Why is Caldera a significant competitor? In 1999, SCO sold almost 40 percent of the Unix licenses worldwide, via its OpenServer and UnixWare Unix operating systems.
In 2000, SCO's percentage of Unix licenses sold dropped just below 30 percent, but SCO, and now Caldera, has a huge installed base of SCO Unix users. If Caldera is successful in migrating many of the OpenServer customers to its Linux distribution, Open Linux, then it will be very competitive with Red Hat.
Free research essays on topics related to: windows xp, open source software, operating system, long term, low end
Research essay sample on Open Source Software Windows Xp
