Linux
Comes Of Age: Linux
And The Enterprise
When
an industry, especially a technology-based industry is young, it's
all about weird guys, eccentrically dressed, whispering secrets.
The conversation is deliberately maintained at a jargon
level, designed to keep the suits at bay - in the beginning, it's
not about business. Linux was like that only a few years ago.
At
LinuxWorld this week in New York City, it was very clear that
Linux had moved to a different point in its cycle.
Of course, the geeks were still around, and honored as the
holders of the special knowledge, but they were far out-numbered
by the suits. Linux
is now a very respectable business operating system and all the
big boys were out in force, meeting with customers and partners,
and assuring press and analysts that they were important - maybe
leading - players in this newest computer industry
reconfiguration.
The
themes were very clear:
Everyone Into The Water; The Game Is On
Every
big player (except Microsoft - see below) has played a Linux card;
a few are in their second or third round.
But
commitment levels vary widely, from major strategic commitments
(IBM)
to alternative offerings (Sun).
We suspect we'll continue to see shifts in resources and
product ratios as Linux picks up steam.
The Focus Shifts To Enterprise Linux
Emphasis
is shifting from viewing Linux as this nice alternative operating
system, but it's not ready for prime time, mission critical stuff,
to filling in the enterprise requirements that allow customers to
consider Linux as a top-to-bottom possibility for many - perhaps
any - projects.
Big
vendors lead the charge here (they have perhaps the most to gain -
and the most market share to protect), but a growing number of
smaller vendors are joining them as partners, providing the
elements of systems management, functionality, and support that
will ultimately make Linux a complete environment.
It's Not A Science Project Any More
Customers
are more interested now in buying Linux in traditional IT guise,
as part of a complete solution, rather than as part of a Do It
Yourself kit of piece parts, downloaded from the Internet, and
gingerly (and loosely) integrated by a tough-to-acquire Linux
wizard. You can see
that in the number of products that are being delivered integrated
with their logical partners, with the drive to offer products in
more user-
(or at least administer-) friendly interfaces, and with the
interest in buying products with traditional kinds of support.
All
this may make Linux less romantic, but it will make it a lot
easier for customers to consider it as a robust business platform,
with a growing ecosystem of application software, support, and
other services.
The Business Of Linux
One
piece remains to be resolved.
We have plenty of business models for Linux application
software and middleware.
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ISVs
can choose to follow a straight open source model, offering
the software under the GPL or another "free"
license, and derive revenue from support or consulting.
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ISVs
can simply treat their Linux ports as they do their other
software and sell it for appropriate prices, choosing the
licensing model of their choice (typically a per server fee
plus an annual maintenance fee for support and upgrades).
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Some
ISVs choose both, offering customers the choice of a GPL
license, which requires that they give back any new code or a
Commercial license which permits the customer to hold his code
as proprietary intellectual property.
MySQL, for example, a well-known Linux data base
product, offers this type of licensing.
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But
the Linux distributions themselves are a more complex issue.
There is greater pressure on them to remain
"pure" and not charge for the open source distribution
and to require that additions (potential enhancements)
to the operating system by offered to the community for future
inclusion in the kernel. It's
tough to support a growing company, pay its staff, and provide
support and even-increasingly sophisticated enhancements to the
operating system without a reasonable income source.
The
distributions have tried selling consulting and support and can
make some money that way. It's
also possible to offer different versions of the distributions,
with different prices:
-
Free
downloads with minimal (typical Open Source community) support
-
Shrink-wrapped
software with documentation for a small fee
-
Advanced
versions of the software with documentation for a larger fee
-
Graduated
levels of support for normal support costs.
These
last two items are clearly aimed at corporate users who are
accustomed to paying for what they need and would generally prefer
a more structured and reliable (not to say traditional) software
delivery and support environment).
There
may be other models available.
We suspect that this will be an important year to explore
those options.
United
Linux, for example, is an attempt to make the smaller Linux
distributions more financially sustainable by providing joint
marketing and other services and obtaining support for them from
some of the larger systems vendors (such as IBM and HP).
But to us, this seems to point to the possibility that an
open source operating system needs to be paid for - directly or
indirectly - and perhaps an indication that we need to start
thinking about how to insure this occurs in an orderly fashion,
without disturbing the amazing community of dedicated and
passionate technologists who create and improve the open source
code.
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