While Linux got its start in many companies as a departmental file-and-print or Web server, sometimes under the radar screen department of the CIO, many large corporate IT departments now use Linux as the cornerstone operating system for core business applications.
This role-change for Linux was spurred partly by large server vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, IBM and NEC, which have become Linux's biggest cheerleaders. While the goal of these companies ultimately is to sell a lot of Linux, the vendors also are involved in the development and strengthening of Linux for use with large-scale enterprise applications.
Lots of research money and man-hours from system vendors has resulted in a stronger Linux, observers say. And as a result, Linux is catching the eye of big business.
Reuters Group has ported its flagship Reuters Market Data Systems (RMDS) applications to Linux and Intel-based servers from HP. RMDS, which provides financial services customers with real-time market data, financial news and market research statistics, was previously a Sun Solaris application, running on Sun's SPARC servers. Demand from Reuters customers for a Linux-based RMDS is what forced the switch, says Mark Hunt, global director of enterprise product marketing at Reuters.
Hunt says Linux technology has been of interest to financial firms for some time but Reuters customers only seriously started considering the technology as system vendors HP and IBM began announcing successful customer Unix-to-Linux migration projects - such as Amazon.com, Boeing Shell and L.L. Bean.
Hunt says the goal of saving money in a down economy has been another major factor in the increase in Linux interest at financial firms.
"A lot of these [financial] institutions are looking to get more mileage out of budgets, and Linux is one way they're doing that," Hunt says.
According to Hunt, some customers with which Reuters works expect to see cost savings of about 40% on hardware by using RMDS on Linux and Intel instead of Sun's server platform.
With Linux, Hunt adds, "it's not like [customers are] changing out their whole platform to something completely different," because Unix and Linux are very similar and are based on open protocols and similar technology. So far, Reuters has installed Linux-based RMDS at Merrill Lynch and is working with several other large brokerages and financial firms on similar rollouts.
"I think Linux has moved from kind of a niche marketplace to be seen as more of a workhorse operating system," says John Hall, president of the nonprofit group Linux International, who's been associated with Linux development for more than 10 years. Hall says this shift is because "a lot of high-availability projects have been going on lately" with Linux and large system vendors.
He says contributions from firms such as IBM and SGI have resulted in improvements in Linux storage volume management, symmetric multiprocessing and the strengthening of the Linux file system. Other development efforts by Fujitsu, NEC, IBM and Hitachi have resulted in improved tools for analyzing Linux performance and troubleshooting Linux kernels.
Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) is another financial firm that has liked what it's seen in Linux. Earlier this year, CSFB ported its Agora application, which processes large-scale trade orders and manages order flow, to the Red Hat Linux operating system. To replace its RISC-based Unix servers, the company chose Intel-based server hardware from Egenera, which makes a chassis that can house up to 24 Intel processors assembled in two-way or four-way symmetric multiprocessing configurations running Red Hat Linux.
While the financial services firm intends to cut its server costs in half with Intel and Linux technology over RISC-based Unix, benchmarks conducted on the new system have shown that the Agora application runs 20 times faster than it did on RISC and Unix, according to Steve Yatko, CTO of Securities IT at CSFB.
While Linux has come a long way, it still has limitations that keep it from completely supplanting high-end Unix and Windows systems, such as its inability to scale past 16 processors. While the Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor promises more scalability for Linux, the release of the chip has been delayed many times. Meanwhile, Unix developers have had 64-bit architecture from multiple vendors on which to develop and test applications for several years.
Still, William Claybrook, a Unix/Linux market analyst with Aberdeen Group, says the trend of Linux being used in high-availability and high-performance systems will grow as businesses look to take advantage of lower-cost 32- and 64-bit Intel architectures over proprietary Unix/RISC systems.
Claybrook says by 2004 Linux will account for 80% of the high-performance computing market, or systems that cost in the $1 million range. However, the shift will not be a sudden shakeup in the market, as the four leading high-performance server vendors - Compaq, HP, Sun, IBM and SGI - all have Intel/Linux products to complement their RISC/Unix offerings.
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