Show spotlight to shine on Linux advances

Attendees headed to this week's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco will be looking for application, desktop and middleware support instead of questioning the operating system's viability.

Linux no longer raises red flags, says David Cook, chairman of InsiteOne, a Wallingford, Conn., company that provides digital-image storage and archiving solutions to the medical community. "Today when we talk to large clients it's generally a plus that we developed our application on the Linux platform."

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Attendees headed to this week's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco will be looking for application, desktop and middleware support instead of questioning the operating system's viability.

Linux no longer raises red flags, says David Cook, chairman of InsiteOne, a Wallingford, Conn., company that provides digital-image storage and archiving solutions to the medical community. "Today when we talk to large clients it's generally a plus that we developed our application on the Linux platform."

Also: Linux adoption continues as SCO battle wages on

Users and analysts say the maturation of Linux is giving LinuxWorld the feel of a mainstream show.

"If you look at the agenda you see desktop bubbling up higher, you see things like operating in a mixed environment," says Pierre Fricke, an analyst at D.H. Brown Associates. "We're now talking about plugging Linux into the enterprise as opposed to [simply using it in] departmental-level or simple infrastructure roles. We're talking about mainline enterprise issues."

Analysts say desktop Linux will be a key focus at the show, with HP and Sun announcing Linux-based thin clients. Fricke also expects to hear about open source middleware technologies.

"Things are moving up the stack," he says. "Linux is not an enterprise system without things like databases and [Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition] application servers. They have had those in WebSphere and DB2 and Oracle and WebLogic, but now you've got open source players getting more serious, and that's going to make things interesting."

Red Hat is expected to release its first Java application server at the conference, following through with plans it announced last year to broaden its business beyond the core operating system. Computer Associates is expected to join the open source community, reviving its Ingres database with Version r3, which the company is scheduled to announce as a Linux open source project.

Show organizer IDG World Expo, a sister company of Network World, expects about 10,000 people to attend the conference, which has attracted more business buyers in recent years to complement the traditional techie showgoers of the past. The additional 55 exhibitors this year will bring the tally to more than 200 companies.

People are saying, "OK, we've heard all the stuff about the city of Munich [moving from Windows to Linux], we've heard about Windows' patch management ills, we've heard about the expensive Windows and Office licenses, now tell us more about Linux," says Laura DiDio, senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "If we're going to switch to Linux, what do we need to get up and running? What's available now, and if it's not available now, when will it be available and how much will it cost? What about integration and interoperability with other environments?"

For InsiteOne, Linux has grown up alongside its business. The company deployed the nascent operating system internally when it launched its first product in 1999.

"Our own growth has been a microcosm of the Linux market," Cook says. "As our business has grown we've run into scalability issues, and fortunately Linux has grown and faced some of the same issues and solved them at the same time."