Linux makes bigger push with servers

Linux has had a great run. But to keep the growth, the upstart operating system needs to please more people like Jim Walsh.
Walsh, chief information officer for the Tyco International Ltd. unit Earth Tech, wanted to do more than the simple chores that are most often handled by Linux. He decided to shift one of the company's most crucial pieces of software - an Oracle Corp. enterprise resource planning system - off Sun Microsystems Inc. servers and its Solaris operating system.

Earth Tech, an engineering and consulting company specializing in environmental cleanup and transportation, opted to run the software on Dell Inc. servers running Linux. Walsh estimated that lower hardware and maintenance costs reduced the cost to run his systems by half.
''I have run Solaris for years. I like Sun,'' Walsh says. ''Linux is significantly more cost-efficient.''
Such moves are still the exception. Since the 1990s, Linux, which comes in free versions and is also sold by companies such as Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc. (which has operations in Utah), has been an important force in holding down computing costs. One reason is that the software runs on inexpensive servers that use chip technology that evolved from personal computers.
Those x86 machines have continued to deliver improvements in price and performance. The combination of those systems and Linux are particularly suited for jobs such as serving up Web pages and running e-mail systems.

But other kinds of servers and operating systems - particularly the Unix system offered by many computer makers - have advantages in handling some big computing jobs such as running databases. Many hardware and software companies are trying to change that picture, but it won't be easy.
Linux needs to ''become more of a central component of the overall data-center strategy,'' says Matt Eastwood, an analyst at the market-research firm IDC.
For one thing, Microsoft is determined to push its Windows operating system into the same fields. Though Linux-based servers account for 12.7 percent of server revenue - up from just 6.4 percent in 2003 - Windows-based servers account for three times the revenue of Linux servers.
Other big server makers such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard are pushing Linux aggressively by offering the operating system on high-end hardware, as well as x86 servers. That is also a focus of Intel, which is working with HP and others to popularize its Itanium chip line for running heavy-duty computing jobs along with Linux.
Source : http://www.sltrib.com/