LinuxWorld showcases business cases for Linux

SAN FRANCISCO - With Linux making deeper inroads into corporate data centers, the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo gave attendees some firsthand information about how open source is maturing to handle more critical business workloads. (All the LinuxWorld headlines here.)

“The question of whether to use Linux isn’t an issue anymore,” says Eric Clapsaddle, Unix systems administrator at Kohl’s department stores in Menomonee Falls, Wis., who made his first trip to the conference this year. “It’s not, ‘Can I do it on Linux?’ It’s, ‘How do I do it on Linux?’”

Addressing that question, the show — which organizers say drew some 11,000 people, about the same as last year — was focused on how Linux can support real business tasks. The bulk of the sessions and keynotes dealt with higher-level technologies such as virtualization, management, security, services-oriented architectures and grid computing, rather than lower-level discussions about the merits and drawbacks of Linux itself.

Meanwhile there were product announcements from a range of companies. FiveRuns and Open Country unveiled open source systems management products; open source collaboration vendors Zimbra and Scalix showed off updated wares; and open source storage companies Zmanda and Cleversafe launched software and an open source project.

Systems vendors such as HP, IBM and Oracle also had news. HP expanded its Linux repertoire, announcing formal support for Debian, while IBM and Oracle talked about widening their support for Linux and open source with services and preconfigured packages.

But the real thrust of the show was around helping IT managers make better use of Linux and open source by integrating it into heterogeneous data center environments wherever it makes the best business sense.

“From now on it’s really all about mainstreaming,” says Michael Dortch, principal business analyst and IT infrastructure management practice leader at the Robert Frances Group. “It’s not about open source vs. proprietary. It’s all part of a company’s business infrastructure. So enterprises need to work with vendors who understand that and ask the question, ‘How do I make my business run better?’”

In order to answer that question, organizations also need to look at other companies to see how Linux and open source deployments have fared in action. In that vein, the event featured real-world case studies and a first-of-its-kind CIO Summit, designed to give CIOs the opportunity to hear from their peers about the benefits and challenges of using open source software.

Guru Vasudeva, associate vice president and chief architect at Nationwide, a $21 billion insurance and financial services company with more than 30,000 employees, appeared on the Summit panel and also gave a keynote describing his company’s use of Linux and virtualization to run nearly a dozen important business applications.

“I’m standing here from a large insurance company talking about using Linux and open source software for our mission-critical applications,” Vasudeva said, during the keynote. “That’s a testament that Linux is no longer on the fringes. It’s really mainstream.”