Linux in the Enterprise: Software Companies

Linux-based software development grows in popularity

As customers choose Linux as their IT platform, Indian software companies are seeing a corresponding growth in the demand for Linux-based software services

The surest way of tracking the popularity of a platform is to figure out how much development work is happening on it. And since Indian companies develop most of the world’s software, what better way to gauge the popularity of Linux than to cast around in the local backwaters?

Express Computer spoke to a range of companies—small and large—to find out what percentage of their development work has shifted to Linux. Many of them reported that Linux now accounts for a significant percentage of development work and is clearly on an upward growth path.

Since the developer community around free/open source software is very active on the Net, posting queries and getting help for the problems faced help organisations save on support costs, says, Vairamani Alagappan

Everyone’s jumping in

At software giant Wipro Technologies, Rajesh Ram Mishra, vice president & business head, Embedded & Access Solutions Division, says, “Nearly 20 percent of our people at Wipro Technologies are using Linux and 15 percent of our work is being carried out on the platform. Any new product development is invariably on Linux as it can be customised for any requirement due to the availability of open source code. Although there may not be many products based on Linux, it is being widely used during the product development stage. There is freedom to scale and there is no need to be tied down to any particular proprietary system.”

Mishra’s colleague, Prabhu K V S R, group head of the Platforms Group at Wipro Technologies, adds that Linux-based software development is getting popular at Wipro Technologies. “We are using it widely in the embedded space. Within the embedded space, we are using it for set-top box development platforms, peripherals, routers and switches. Storage virtualisation solutions on Linux are another area. We are designing next generation storage solutions using Linux.”

Prashant Prakash, founder and chief strategy officer of the Bangalore-based Netkraft says that software development on Linux has increased significantly at Netkraft in the last 2-3 years and constitutes 20 percent of their development activities.

“Customers have displayed interest in Linux as a viable alternative to Solaris and Windows enterprise servers, which is also reflected in the order composition in the last few quarters. In the case of large enterprise projects, we have seen Linux being considered as a serious alternative only during the last few quarters,” says Prakash.

Some vendors report that customers themselves are now insisting on Linux. Sriman Narayan, chief technology officer, vMoksha Technologies says, “Customers today are concerned about price and Linux being an open source OS solves that problem. It is available on all Intel platforms. Many of our customers have now started using commercial Linux distributions such as Red Hat Linux.” Around 25 percent of vMoksha’s development work now centres around Linux, says Narayan

Popular segments

The embedded solutions space is one market where Linux has neatly wedged itself. Aniruddha Banerjee, vice president, Sonata Software, says that while Linux accounts for 10 percent of Sonata’s development work, the embedded space accounts for 50 percent, while 10 percent is enterprise software. A small percentage of work on Linux is related to PDAs. Banerjee says that the embedded market is the fastest growing market opportunity for Linux.

Sanjay Sahani, group project manager at HCL Technologies, explains why Linux is so popular in the embedded market. “For the development of embedded systems (including network routers, switches, networking equipment and mobile phones), the availability of Linux source code provides a significant advantage to the developer, since it gives the flexibility of incorporating just the required functionality, without any external dependency.”

Linux as development platform

Interestingly, some companies use Linux as the development platform even though the application may finally be deployed on Solaris or AIX. “For our own development efforts we have found Linux a viable alternative to procuring costly platform licenses as compared with commercial versions of Unix,” says Netkraft’s Prakash. “We have developed solutions both ways; the more common approach has been to develop on Linux and later deploy on Solaris or AIX. Some of our product development customers expect portability across all Unix flavours, including Linux, for final deployment on platforms.”

Sahani explains that for smaller projects the infrastructure cost, like OS, tools and hardware for development, could turn out to be significant part of the overall development cost. “In these cases development on Linux will be more cost-effective than development on alternative Unix platforms like Sun.” However, in large projects of around 100 man months, the cost of hardware and software as a proportion of the overall development cost becomes quite insignificant, he says.

Narayan says that 90 percent of vMoksha’s Linux-based software development is centred around the retail segment where customers are very price-conscious. Prakash corroborates this view. “We have seen instances where Linux has been considered as the platform of choice on the retail front, which is one of Netkraft’s focus areas. Product development companies in this space, considering cost of ownership as a key issue, have shown clear preference for open source environments/platforms/components in general and Linux in particular. Linux often provides the right mix of scalability, cost and performance in most cases where retail chains are of small to medium size.”

Narayan of vMoksha says that the foremost reason for the popularity of Linux is the low cost of operation. Secondly, the technology support for Linux has increased like never before. Thirdly, most third-party software is available on Linux (for instance, databases, application servers and middleware). Lastly, most large vendors like IBM are now associated with Linux.”

Availability of manpower, development tools, support, etc, is another factor that drives the decision-making process. “There are no issues in terms of availability of manpower trained on Linux. GUI is also no longer an issue as platform-independent GUI tools are available. However, one issue is that of free tools being used on Linux, which at a later stage in the lifecycle may develop a major bug,” says Sahani.

Vairamani Alagappan, project manager-Product Engineering Services, Infogain India says that the challenge faced by both end-user organisations as well as software consulting firms is knowledge retention as manpower turnover is very high.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the consensus is that the choice of the platform, especially in the services space, is driven by customer preferences. As an increasing number of customers choose Linux as the platform, the demand for Linux-based services is growing. In market segments like the embedded solutions space, where developers have more of a say in the choice of platform, the flexibility and freedom provided by the open source nature of Linux has won it many converts.

With inputs from Shipra Arora in Delhi and Abhinav Singh in Bangalore