There
were actually dozens of companies on the LinuxWorld floor who are
in the ecosystem of Linux, offering software, services,
consulting, support, or specialized devices.
We interviewed a few at some length, browsed some more.
We can only write about four here.
The
exciting thing to note is that it is the appearance of these
companies, particularly in a tough economic climate, and their
ability to find partners and customers, that indicates the health
of a new market. Based
on what I saw this week, Linux is on its way.
Linuxcare
started out as a company that was going to be in the support
business, reassuring big companies that it was okay to buy an open
source OS because they would stand behind it.
They've
evolved to a vendor of enterprise software, offering Levanta
software to facilitate, consolidate, and reduce the cost of
administering multiple virtual Linux servers on the mainframe.
Levanta
specializes in insuring that the customer will employ best
practices, enable collaboration between Linux, PC, mainframe,
network, and other experts and double the effectiveness of system
administrators.
IBM
is using Levanta in its first Linux Center of Competence on New
York City, a facility to help financial services companies test
and implement Linux applications by showing customers both IBM and
its partners in hardware, software, and services.
Look
at MySQL and enter the mysterious world of open source
applications software. This Swedish company offers its database
software under the GPL at no cost (but users must offer back any
modifications) or under a commercial license at $395 per server
(of any size).
The
only way its competitors (who MySQL says, with a straight face,
include Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQLServer) can deal with its
pricing is to insist that it doesn't include the same features.
We're not competent to make that judgment.
They don't actually try to match competitors' features, in
any case, but focus on being high performance and very stable.
MySQL's Marten Mickos says they "will add every feature
the mainstream market needs - but not too fast."
Since
it's a free download, if you're a Linux user, and you can manage
the interface (it's not very user friendly) you can judge for
yourself. They've had 4 million downloads and suspect the actual
number is higher. With 27,000 new downloads a day (that's about 10
million a year), many Linux distribution as well as Apple's OS X,
and many UNIX distributions (including Solaris companion), include
a copy of MySQL. It
also runs on Windows, QNX, and will run on DOS and Amiga.
We
wrote about Ximian briefly in the Sun section of this newsletter,
but it's worth mentioning them again.
They're the counter-example to others' theory that the
Linux desktop market hasn't started yet.
Ximian
sees itself as strictly in the enterprise business market - it
doesn't play in the consumer market at all.
They see four desktop segments, and they focus on three of
them:
-
Linux
desktops for developers and systems administrators
-
Transactional
desktops that are focused on a particular application
like customer service or retail store management
-
International
desktops, responding to the government desire for an open
source alternative
-
A
general purpose (consumer) desktop which includes personal productivity
software, games, etc. Ximian
doesn't play here.
They
see their job as solving the problem of desktop usability and
offering desktop applications like Evolution (a free, downloadable
Outlook look-alike) as well as supporting interoperability for
file formats, communications protocols, and messaging systems (via
their Ximian Connector for Exchange, which sells for $69.95 per
client).
Ximian
also provides various levels of fee paid support.
In the 2.5 years since Evolution shipped, 1.5 million
copies have been downloaded. This will grow rapidly, now that the
software is included with StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.
Metalinx
offers simple metrics to administrators by looking at 400
different systems-wide metrics, across all the servers of a
complex system (and all of their varied operating systems), using
a weighting scheme to determine what's happening.
It will provide a single metric for each server and will
automatically send work to the best path for getting the job done
at a particular moment.
This
is a mature product that has been shipping for three years.
Metalinx, picking up the jargon of the moment, referred to it as
"adaptive infrastructure," perhaps with a nod to the
fact that HP's Compaq.com, with its 12,000 servers, is one of its
customers.
In
2003, Metalinx will offer a new release which will add a charge-back
system to the existing performance and high availability
management features.
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