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Cover Story
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Time was when no CIO would consider an Open Source platform
for running his core applications. Despite the lower acquisition cost and the
perception of better security, the lack of enterprise applications on OSS platforms
was a bugbear. That is starting to change. By Megha Banduni
 Linux
is a commercially viable platform for running enterprise applications and its
acceptance is growing, at the expense of Unix. Christopher Hearn, Director Solution
Marketing Platform, SAP AG says, “People are moving from Unix to Linux
more than from Windows Server to Linux, for the simple reason that migrating
from Unix to Linux is simpler than doing so from Windows because of the skillset
requirements.”
"In a very large scale system, the tendency
is to go for Unix, because it offers greater flexibility to change processors,
hardware
and software, whereas Linux provides lesser
flexibility"
- Christopher Hearn
Director Solution Marketing Platform
SAP AG |
Earlier, enterprise users were a bit hesitant because there
were few instances of enterprise applications ported onto Linux, and references
were hard to come by The Indian market is witnessing a trend where ISVs are
partnering with open source vendors to tap the small and medium business segment.
Linux as an enterprise platform
Gartner has predicted that 90 percent of Global 2000 organisations will have
formal open-source acquisition and management strategies in place and that open
source will be included in mission-critical software portfolios in 75 percent
of global enterprises by 2010.
Enterprise software applications are being ported onto Linux.
Over and above this, companies selling proprietary software are selectively
adopting open-source business models.
"Linux as a platform
has been proved
capable of running
mission critical
applications. ISVs and proprietary vendors come to us because
they want their
application to be certified"
- Nandu Pradhan
President & MD
Red Hat India |
According to Nandu Pradhan, President & MD, Red Hat India,
partnerships between vendors of proprietary software with open source companies
is good insofar as it brings the benefit of expertise in terms of marketing
and domain knowledge and combines the market reach of both players.
Balaji Jagannathan, Country Director, Sybase India says, “Linux and open
source have changed the way that software applications are developed. Vendors
have to concentrate more on features, stability, reliability and security as
the differentiating factors. Linux offers a neutral platform and virtually removes
the tight coupling between applications and the platform upon which they are
deployed.”
BI, CRM, ERP, databases and middleware are the popular applications
being deployed on Linux and early adopters are telecom, BFSI and retail. Amongst
SMBs, Linux is becoming a popular option when it comes to running ERP and CRM.
The application vendor perspective
Oracle and SAP are the leaders in the enterprise software space. Express Computer
spoke to these companies about their partnerships with Red Hat and Novell.
SAP has supported open source from 1992. Since then, SAP has partnered with
both Red Hat and Novell.
According to Hearn, better performance, reliability and cost savings are the
reasons why customers are shifting their workloads to Linux. which isn’t
to say that there aren’t any creases to be ironed out. “In a very
large scale system (above 50,000 users with terabytes of data), the tendency
is to go for Unix, because it offers greater flexibility to change processors,
hardware and software, whereas Linux provides lesser flexibility,” adds
Hearn.
Recently, Oracle announced Unbreakable Linux, a support program
that provides enterprises with global support for Linux. Recognising the demand
for enterprise-quality Linux support and seeing an opportunity to significantly
reduce IT infrastructure costs, Oracle now offers Linux support.
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Vendors have to concentrate more
on features, stability, reliability and security as the differentiating
factors. Linux offers a neutral platform and virtually removes the tight
coupling between applications and the platform upon which they are deployed
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Oracle has been a key contributor to the Linux community for
many years, having made significant code contributions such as the Oracle Cluster
File System that is now part of Linux kernel 2.6.16.
According to Oracle’s spokesperson, “Linux is important to Oracle
because true enterprise quality support for Linux is something that our customers
want. Oracle is deeply committed to delivering high quality enterprise Linux
support and making Linux more advanced so that we can accelerate the growth
of the Linux operating system as a viable low cost alternative for enterprises.”
Linux is available under the General Public Licence
(GPL), which requires free distribution of the source code. A significant
amount of code that is shipped by Red Hat as part of its distribution
is actually created by developers outside of Red Hat. Oracle takes
the source code that Red Hat makes available under GPL.
Oracle makes all Linux patches and updates available
under GPL and anyone including Red Hat can take those fixes. Oracle
plans to synchronize with every major Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
software release including updates. If Red Hat does not include
Oracle fixes in their update releases, Oracle will include the additional
fixes at the time of each major synchronisation with the current
RHEL software release.
Says Pradhan, “Linux as a platform has been proved capable of running
mission critical applications. ISVs and proprietary vendors come to us because
they want their application to be certified. Also, they want to give their customers
an integrated application.”
| BFSI is amongst the early adopters of Linux . We
spoke with a few CIOs and asked them about their experiences running applications
on Linux.
Says, Pritesh Thaker, AVP, UTI Bank, “Our
association with open source goes back several years. While designing
our Phone Banking Centre, one of our major projects, we considered several
options. Based on the strong technology support and best performance benchmark
tests, we plunged into Linux.” The bank is using Oracle Apps, Oracle
Database and a customised telebanking System.
Thaker feels that Linux is completely hassle free, maintenance
free and lowers TCO. Based on the success of their phone banking centre
project, the company has already deployed Linux for its credit card applications
as well.
Sanjay Sharma, Advisor-IT, IDBI Ltd and MD & CEO
of IDBI Intech Ltd say, “The advantage of using Linux is that it
is cost-effective, robust, scalable and secure.”
IDBI Bank adopted Linux six years back, when they launched
their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. After that the bank ported
its e-mail server onto Linux and today 5,000 users are using that mail
server.
In 2001, the bank deployed Oracle Financials and Oracle
HRMS on an Intel box running Red Hat Linux.
“The applications are giving excellent performance
and scale up well. We can customise solutions as per customer expectations,”
adds Sharma.
The issue is whether there is sufficient support available?
Where on one side, vendors (both proprietary and open source) claim that
they provide full support, on other hand, we spoke with few CIOs who are
sceptical about it. For instance, Balasubramanium, GM, IT, Roots Industries
feels, “Main challenge with Linux is that it needs proper support
service. Availability of support service is less as compared to Windows.
As a result, we have to outsource this service or hire expertise to support
if system fails.”
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A positive trend
"Open source software allows vendors to compete for support contracts
based on quality of service and price. Access to the source code also
lets companies take advantage of
self-support when it is
practical and desirable"
- Prakash Advani
Novell Linux Practice Head India. |
Analysts feel that partnership programs are the result of
the desire to sell to SMBs. This trend can only progress if both companies have
a clear roadmap and provide proper support to each other’s customers.
Says Prakash Advani, Novell Linux Practice Head India. “From
a vendor’s perspective, a company going the open source way will open up
its R&D set-up to a larger developer and engineering audience. The community
works together to make the application work. Contrast this with a product that’s
developed and supported in-house—the latter is quite limiting in terms
of product development.”
Bhavish Sood, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner says, “This
trend has to do a lot with vendors focusing on the mid market. Mid markets are
good growth opportunities for these business application providers and
using some open source components reduces the overall cost of acquisition for
their clients.”
Vendors feel that with declining license revenues in their
application business, maintenance and support revenues could help meet the shortfall.
Sood adds, “Dual licensing is becoming increasingly popular
among vendor-centric open-source projects like MySQL for example.”
Gartner explains that in this approach, the owner of the software copyright
provides a “community” edition with no formal warranty or support
agreement. The vendor also provides a traditional closed-source license with
commercial grade service and support.
Linux was primarily used on edge servers. Today it is getting into the heart
of the data centre.
“Most server applications such as databases are already available on Linux,”
adds Advani.
 Novell
has certified several thousand applications and it has multiple levels of partnerships.
The company provides various levels of developer support for application vendors
through its Developer Net program (developer.novell.com), application testing
and certification services.
The company also offers build services where partners and developers get free
access to the tools and services that they need to build their applications.
This allows developers to submit code, which is automatically built not just
for SUSE Linux but also for other popular Linux distributions.
Linux is an operating system that has certain tangible advantages of its own.
IDC estimates that in another two-three years, Windows and Linux will each have
one half of the server market to themselves.
According to Advani, “Open source software allows for
broader options when it comes to support. Proprietary software vendors often
insist that customers avail of support only from them or their authorised partners.
Open source software allows vendors to compete for support contracts based on
quality of service and price. Access to the source code also lets companies
take advantage of self-support when it is practical and desirable.”
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“Linux users need proper support but the availability of support
services for this OS is less than that available for Windows. As a result,
we have to outsource this service or hire expertise to support it if the
system fails,” says OA Balasubramanium, GM, IT, Roots Industries.
He believes that every application doesn’t support Linux. According
to him, only 15 to 20 percent of applications can run on Linux today.
Anjan Chaudhury, VP-IT, Bharti Airtel says, “We were using Linux
for messaging, but now we have shifted from Linux to Unix because our
user base has grown.” He explains that for a user base of 2,000 to
3,000, Linux makes sense. As the number of users rises, Unix becomes the
better option.”
Even as application vendors partner with open source companies, support
problem remain. For example, if a user has hardware from Dell, and SAP
or Oracle running atop Red Hat Linux on this box it becomes a complex
task for the user to ask for assistance in case of any problem.
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Says Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director, Competitive Strategies,
Microsoft India, “We will continue to offer benefits by delivering on the
promise of a People Ready Business, provide and deliver against a clear roadmap,
meet the need for reliability, security, manageability and interoperability.”
Gartner feels that the principle goal of open source is to provide high-quality
software at an optimal cost.
“This goal is not revolutionary; after all, we can assume that it is the
goal of all well-meaning software development efforts. It is the ability to
accurately deliver on this goal that ideally differentiates open source from
other efforts,” adds Sood.
| According to a Gartner report, although Windows continues
to dominate the market with a 47.1 percent revenue share, Linux has received
encouraging acceptance with 13.9 percent revenue share in the first quarter
of 2006.
By 2010, 90 percent of Global 2000 organisations
will have formal open-source acquisition and management strategies (0.8
probability).
By 2008, OSS solutions will directly compete with closed-source
products in all software infrastructure markets (0.8 probability).
By 2010, open source will be included in mission-critical
software portfolios within 75 percent of Global 2000 enterprises (0.7
probability).
By 2008, 70 percent of Unix ISVs will make Linux the
first priority port (0.8 probability).
Source: Gartner
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Prospects: looking good
Balakrishnan feels that domain knowledge is the key to successful development
and deployment of vertical-specific applications. “We believe that as long
as we invest in R&D, the partner ecosystem and bring solutions that lower
TCO quickly to market, customers will adopt our solutions.
“Oracle is committed to the success of Linux and will stand behind its
support for the same by providing indemnification for intellectual property
claims raised against our customers,” adds Oracle spokesperson.
This indemnification is offered for all Oracle supported Linux users, and is
included with the company’s Network, Basic, and Premier Linux support Sybase
has a tie-up with Red Hat and SUSE and it plans to continue the same.
“We aim to work collaboratively with open source application vendors to
ensure that they can support our database and related server products on Linux.
For instance Sugar CRM and Compiere already have support for the Sybase database
on Linux,” adds Jagannathan.
On the server side we have seen the evolution of Linux in edge computing for
duties such as Web server and messaging. While it is being said that Linux is
ready to run large mission-critical applications, questions linger vis-a-vis
interoperability and ease of integration.
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