Linux in the Enterprise: Tier-one Vendors

NOISE or substance?

Tier-one vendors like Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP and others have announced their support for Linux. Venkatesh Hariharan finds out if this is driven by the ‘anything but Microsoft’ sentiment, or whether there are deeper, substantive reasons

In the past, they went by the rather dismissive acronym, NOISE. During the high-decibel browser wars, Oracle, IBM and Sun were quick to gang up behind Netscape against arch-enemy, Microsoft. The spearhead of that alliance was quashed like the proverbial bug and Netscape is today a mere footnote in IT history.

To observers of technology history, the current realignment of forces behind the Linux operating system sounds suspiciously like NOISE Part II. The usual suspects have now lined up behind Linux. So is anything different this time around? Can the penguin avoid being run over by the Microsoft juggernaut?

Shekhar Dasgupta of Oracle feels that a single support organisation ensures the highest level of support and availability to customers, which is very crucial for mission-critical applications

It is probably too early to answer these questions. After all, it’s only recently that Linux has graduated from being a techie’s toy to being deployed in enterprises. That hasn’t stopped Oracle, IBM, Sun and a number of tier-one vendors like CA, HP, etc, from throwing their collective weight behind Linux.

Express Computer spoke to the tier-one vendors supporting Linux to get a picture of the efforts they are putting into making Linux more popular and whether CIOs can count on these companies if they consider making a long-term commitment to Linux.

Vendor support

Oracle, of course, has been famous for shouting from the rooftops that it is ‘unbreakable on Linux.’ Shekhar Dasgupta, managing director of Oracle India points out that all key Oracle products are available on Linux and that Oracle supports all major distributions of Linux.

“Oracle’s commitment goes a step beyond making software available on Linux. Oracle offers first-line, direct technical support for a wide variety of Linux operating systems, including Red Hat, and all distributions in the UnitedLinux family. A single support organisation ensures the highest level of support and availability to customers—this is very crucial, especially for mission-critical applications.” says Dasgupta.

Sandeep Menon of IBM says that Linux is replacing other operating systems and carving a niche for itself, even as other OSes are increasingly becoming niche players

Oracle India has also teamed up with Hewlett-Packard India to set up the Oracle HP e-Governance Centre of Excellence at Oracle’s head office in India. This centre, which has been set up to support the e-governance initiatives of central, state and local government bodies in India, uses Linux as the operating system platform.

IBM, of course, was one of the first organisations to get on the Linux bandwagon and famously committed over a billion dollars of resources to the operating system in 2001. Sam Palmisano, who was behind the move, is now CEO of IBM and therefore IBM’s commitment to Linux flows from the top. During his recent visit to India, Palmisano lost no opportunity to push Linux.

IBM India is the ASEAN support centre for Linux and Sandeep Menon, Linux business manager, IBM ASEAN / SA says that the Linux business is among the fastest growing segments for IBM’s Indian operations. “By its very nature, open source is highly customisable and therefore requires service and support. What IBM is trying to tell customers is, ‘If your concern is who will provide support?’ the clear answer to that is ‘We will.’”

“Whether it is delivering the infrastructure, the servers, the desktops, the networking, middleware or bringing in the ISVs and then doing the actual systems integration, the gamut of services will be provided by IBM and its partners,” says Menon.

Interestingly, Menon does not look at the turf battles in purely Windows versus Linux terms.

Anil Valluri says that Sun has gained market share in the higher- and mid-segment, but wants to fight Wintel in the low-end server segment with Linux

“Linux is an operating system that has certain tangible advantages in its own right. It is replacing other operating systems and carving a niche for itself. Other operating systems are increasingly becoming niche players.” IDC estimates that in another three to four years, Windows and Linux will each have one half of the server market to themselves.

IBM is probably the one vendor that’s sitting pretty. The revenues from its large services business insulates it from the erosion that its proprietary flavour of Unix—AIX—suffers due to the growing popularity of Linux. IBM has some astute thinking by former CEO Lou Gerstner to thank, on this front. Gerstner foresaw that as the complexity of IT infrastructure grew, revenues from the services side would grow the fastest. Guess who headed IBM’s services division? Answer: Palmisano.

For IBM, the situation is in stark contrast to seven years ago when OS2, its attempt to take the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system head-on, ended up a miserable failure. Does anyone even remember OS2 now?

Rajendra Dhavale of CA India says that there is huge potential for Linux but integration and management challenges need to be addressed aggressively

Menon’s comment about Linux taking market share away from other operating systems may be a subtle dig at it traditional Unix competitor Sun Microsytems. At the low-end of the server market Linux has become a threat to Solaris and analysts say that Sun embracing Linux has been a reaction to competition from low-end Linux servers sold by companies like Dell.

Anil Valluri, director, Systems Engineering, Sun Microsystems puts a different perspective on the issue when he says that Sun has gained market share in the higher- and mid-segment, but has seen smaller sales in low-end servers, where Wintel has an advantage. “We want to fight that battle with Linux on our side.”

Valluri says that Linux from Sun is more than just an OS. “Sun takes a systems approach—x86-based hardware, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and tight integration with our Sun One product family and Java value-added software, and a full complement of Sun service offerings to support the entire solution. The result: everything you need—developed, integrated, and tested by the world’s leading supplier of network computing systems.”

Six Sun One products are available on Linux today—Application server, Directory server, Web server, Active Server Pages, Studio and Grid Engine, with plans to deliver more in the near future. By the end of the year Sun One Portal Server, Sun One Identity Server, Sun One Calendar Server, and Sun One Messaging Server are planned to be added.

Apart from Oracle, IBM and Sun, other tier-one vendors like CA also have significant plans for Linux.

Rajendra Dhavale, consulting director, CA India, says that there is huge potential for Linux but integration and management challenges need to be addressed aggressively and that’s where companies like CA can play a part.

“Although there are a myriad of add-on software available from the open-source community, they are not integrated into a cohesive system for the heterogeneous enterprise. Many CIOs have been therefore slightly apprehensive about relying on open-source applications to develop, integrate, secure, manage and support their Linux implementations.”

Dhavale says that CA addresses this issue by offering more than 60 management solutions for distributed and mainframe implementations with plans of launching more Linux-based solutions at Linux World 2003 in San Francisco in the first week of August. CA has also set up a Linux Competency Centre in India along with TCS in New Delhi.

The picture that emerges then is of tier-one vendors rolling out significant levels of support for Linux deployments in the enterprise. However, what about the longevity of the operating system, given the SCO suit against IBM and the notices served by SCO against almost 1,500 users of Linux? Could Linux go the Netscape way? After all, Microsoft is the most ferocious competitor the IT industry has ever known.

In the latter case, “cutting off Netscape’s air supply” (to quote a memorable phrase allegedly used by Microsoft VP, Mike Maples) was enough to kill the Navigator browser. In the case of Linux, the target is much more amorphous. Unlike the Netscape Navigator browser, Linux is not owned by any one company. Started in 1991 as a pastime by University of Helsinki student, Linus Torvalds, the Linux kernel attracted a huge number of volunteers who contributed to its code base. Today, an estimated 300,000 volunteers across the world contribute to maintaining and developing the Linux platform and the numbers keep growing.

Linux and other Free/Open Source software like Apache, MySQL, etc, have now become firmly entrenched in the Web server and mail server space and the operating system is now making inroads into the enterprise server and desktop space. The support from tier-one vendors like Oracle, IBM, Sun and CA is an indication of the momentum behind Linux. But those who watched the astonishing manner in which Microsoft rallied around Bill Gates’s 1995 “Internet Tidal Wave” memo and crushed Netscape can never rule Microsoft out.