| Enterprises are likely to find Linux useful for bigger, more mission-critical applications next year due in part to a $1 billion infusion given the technology by IBM.
The company plans to devote that amount to Linux development, marketing and consulting next year, up from the “several hundreds of millions of dollars” this year, said Steve Solazzo, vice president of Linux for IBM. “We are convinced Linux can do for business applications what the Internet did for networking and communications,” said IBM chairman Louis Gerstner at the recent eBusiness Expo held in New York City.
IBM’s support will help drive the functionality, stability and scalability needed to bring Linux to mission-critical applications, said Bill Claybrook, an analyst with Aberdeen Group. Linux is now used for supercomputing, Web serving, file serving, firewalls and other infrastructure applications. But it has not yet been as accepted in mission-critical applications except for businesses, such as service providers, in which the infrastructure is the mission-critical app.
The hope is that IBM’s infusion will enable Linux to gain maturity to be a player in mission-critical applications, such as large databases and online transaction processing. |
