Linux invasion begins in corporate India

Corporate India is slowly warming up to Linux. The reactions of CIOs spans a wide spectrum—from bold implementation to cautious adoption and from outright rejection to whole-hog switchover, says Venkatesh Hariharan

If you wore a suit and attended Linux World 2003 held between August 4-7, 2003 in San Francisco, you would no longer feel out of place. Even the penguin in the LinuxWorld logo now sports a tie! IDG, organisers of the event, estimated that the number of users attending the event this year rose by 50 percent over last year, up from 25 percent growth of the previous comparison.

Back home, at the recently held Nasscom IT User Awards, most winners had some Linux strategy in place for their enterprises. HDFC Bank, Indian Airlines and Life Insurance Corporation, winners of the awards for the banking, transportation and insurance segments respectively, have been embracing Linux with enthusiasm.

In a traditionally price conscious market like India, it comes as no surprise that free and open-source software like Linux, OpenOffice and others have opened up a whole new set of possibilities that never existed before. Expectedly, the reactions of CIOs has spanned a wide spectrum—from cautious adoption to bold implementation, from outright rejection to whole-hog switchover. Concerns about security, support and availability of skilled personnel may hold back widespread adoption but what is unmistakable is that CIOs across the country welcome the much-needed competition that Linux, Open Office, etc, have brought into the market.

The Life Insurance Corporation, normally not an organisation associated with innovation, has been unusually aggressive in embracing Linux. The organisation plans to deploy around 10,000 thin client systems in its offices across the country. LIC has legacy Cobol applications, which were being accessed through PCs. The management looked hard at its needs and decided to replace the PCs with thin clients running Linux and the Mozilla browser on 32 MB of flash memory. While each PC would have cost around Rs 24,000, the thin client solution that was tested out for over three months, costs a mere Rs 14,000, saving LIC a whopping Rs 10 crore.

Dr D B Phatak, the highly respected professor at the School of Information Technology at IIT, Bombay, who advised LIC on this decision says that LIC has over 2,000 branches and as and when PCs need to be replaced, Linux-based thin clients will take their place.

For Neeraj Bhai, chief technology officer at IDBI Bank, the love affair with Linux goes back a long way. IDBI Bank has had a Linux-based mail server that has been running for the last five years without an upgrade.

“The mail server started off handling 15,000 e-mails a day and scaled up to 1,65,000 e-mails a day. We took an old server and installed Red Hat Linux on it, saving on hardware costs because we did not have to buy a new box. If I had used Microsoft software on my mail server, I would have to pay for Microsoft Exchange and for 1,500 client access licenses. Plus, I am not sure if Windows could have taken that load. I have not seen cases where my Linux box crashed while I have seen cases where Windows has crashed,” says Bhai.

Encouraged by his experience with Linux, Bhai even persuaded his Board of Directors to give him a free hand to implement Oracle Financials on Linux, in what was one of the first Oracle on Linux implementations in the banking sector in South Asia. In another money saving move, Bhai implemented OpenOffice across 900 desktops and estimates that this move alone saved the organisation more than Rs 1 crore.

Driven by cost, licensing issues and technical issues, a cascading number of CIOs across the country are now taking a serious look at the world of free and open source software. The growing popularity of Linux, the availability of Windows-like user interfaces in GNOME and KDE, and the availability of application software like OpenOffice means that CIOs can now do the unthinkable—build a complete infrastructure using free and open source software.

Alternate platform

When even cash rich financial institutions look to free and open source software, what about smaller organisations? At Apnaloan.com, a financial services portal, Parag Patankar, co-founder and CIO, is supervising a complete platform shift.

Apnaloan has 175 desktops. Three months ago they began shifting users to StarOffice and brought their costs down by 50-60 percent vis-à-vis Microsoft Office. Apnaloan chose StarOffice over OpenOffice because Sun provides support for StarOffice. (OpenOffice is available for free while StarOffice is a packaged version of OpenOffice sold, complete with support, by Sun).

Over the next few months, Apnaloan plans to deploy Linux on all desktops and shift to a mix of StarOffice and OpenOffice. Patankar estimates that this move will save the organisation 70-80 percent of the cost of the operating system. Since Linux is free, the 20-30 percent will be spent on one-time training costs.

The story of how Linux is invading the mainstream makes for fascinating reading. Linux begun as a hobby by Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. On September 17, 1991, he quietly uploaded the 10,000 lines of code he had written to create an operating system for his 386. Torvalds released the software under the General Public License (GPL) devised by the legendary programmer and founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman. Under the terms of GPL, anyone could take the source code and modify it, provided they contributed the changes back in source form.

Due to the freedom provided by the GPL, people started downloading Linux and adding more features to it. Over the last 12 years, the tiny rivulet of code has turned into a vast ocean that consists of more than 10 million lines of code! It is estimated that there are around 300,000 developers now working on Linux and related projects through collaborative websites like sourceforge.net.

According to Neeraj Bhai of IDBI Bank, the company’s board is now convinced about Linux, and it will now be easier to roll out future deployments

For Torvalds, the rise of the Internet came at a fortuitous time. The Internet enabled people across the world to come together in what’s probably one of the largest collaborative projects in human history.

The open source model is probably the next logical evolution in the world of IT. The Intel and Windows combination opened up new horizons for software developers because, for the first time, they had an inexpensive, mass-market platform to develop for. The infinitely malleable nature of Linux means that not only can you develop programs for the Linux platform but actually mould it to suit your needs. From embedded systems to supercomputers, the open source nature of Linux enables it to be deployed on an astonishing variety of platforms.

It is not just Linux that benefited from the growth of the Internet and the collaboration that it made possible. At websites like Sourceforge.net, a vast variety of open source projects ranging from groupware to ERP to CRM to office applications are mushrooming. Broadly classified as FLOSS (Free Libre, Open Source Software), the term encompasses two major camps—the free software movement founded by Richard Stallman, which insists that all software should be produced under GPL, and the open source movement that has a more flexible approach to licensing software. The FLOSS model has produced outstanding software like the Apache Web server that runs 60 percent of Web servers and Qmail mail server, considered by some to be one of the best programs ever written. The emergence of FLOSS software ranges from office suites like OpenOffice, user interfaces like GNOME and KDE, the Linux Terminal Server Project, etc, that constantly expand the capabilities of FLOSS and make Linux increasingly attractive as an alternate platform.

Inside the enterprise

In the corporate world, the malleability of Linux reflects itself in many ways. Some are simply mundane, but essential.

Anil Garg, senior vice president of IT and New Media at Sony Entertainment Television says, “Wherever we have to do something customised—a backup server or a mail gateway that chugs along and doesn’t crash or fail, and doesn’t require fancy hardware, we use Linux. Things like a backup server or a mail server that do a single dedicated job are very easy to do on Linux,” he says.

According to Parag Patankar, Apnaloan.com plans to deploy Linux on all desktops and shift to a mix of StarOffice and OpenOffice

Bhai says that initially, most organisations adopted Linux for non-critical applications like messaging, websites, etc, where a couple of hours of downtime is tolerable.

From doing such routine tasks, Linux has now matured to a point where it has gained credibility as a server OS. A K Rastogi, director, IT, Indian Airlines (IA), says that IA is seriously considering deploying a mainframe with the capability of running virtual multiple Linux servers on it to achieve the objective of server consolidation. According to Rastogi, such a deployment would reduce the TCO (total cost of ownership) substantially because no license fees have to be paid for using Linux on multiple servers.

IA is also exploring the possibility of following the trail blazed by LIC. IA uses hundreds of PCs with 3270 emulation software and may replace these with terminals running Linux.

Interestingly, it is the banking and financial sector and the government, two segments normally seen as archconservatives that have been early adopters of Linux! Multinationals, especially those who have globally standardised on the Microsoft platform, have a tougher task in migrating to Linux.

Anil Garg says that whenever Sony Entertainment Television requires something customised that doesn’t crash or fail, and doesn’t require fancy hardware, Linux is used

Sunil Mehta, senior vice president and area systems director—Central Asia, J Walter Thompson says that JWT’s Web portal and proxy servers run Linux. JWT is also considering installing an Oracle e-CRM application on Linux. However, he rules out the possibility of using Linux and Linux-based applications on desktops.

“As an ad agency, we make presentations 24 hours a day and we are not sure if presentations made in StarOffice can be opened in Microsoft PowerPoint. We have to be careful because we cannot play with client’s data,” says Mehta.

JWT has a presence in 125 countries and 62,000 people worldwide. “We follow standards consciously. Microsoft has proven its leadership and we know that it will be around. With Linux there are 20 versions floating around. Will Linux be around and who will support it? Linux has supporters but no owner. Once you identify an owner, the comfort level goes up.”

Security is another issue that worries Mehta, who is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). Mehta says that the issue of security in Linux comes up often in the CISA mailing lists.

Another issue is the availability of support. “Support and migration are big issues, particularly in MNCs and we will take small steps. There will be no big bang approach, particularly because we are not experts in Linux,” says Mehta.

The migration path

The picture that emerges from talking to CIOs is that while Linux is firmly established in the networked servers market (proxy servers, mail servers, etc) it still has to make several big strides before it is widely deployed to run core applications and desktops. The availability of support from tier-one vendors like IBM, Sun, Oracle, CA and others is reassuring for CIOs, but it still is a question of ‘Who will take the first plunge?’

Understandably, most CIOs prefer to take a wait-and-watch attitude.

C N Ram of HDFC Bank feels that as giants like HP, IBM and Sun assure compatibility with Linux, the open source OS is bound to get better acceptability

At HDFC Bank, C N Ram, head of Information Technology, says that Linux is used as a proxy for the Internet gateway and Linux is used in specific applications involving digital certificates. “These applications involve a high level of security, and I can say we haven’t had any problems as far as security and other issues are concerned.”

However, Ram is cautious when it comes to HDFC Bank’s core banking applications and applications involving the customer.

“We are not very open to the idea of adopting Linux since there are not enough testimonials that can assure us of the smooth functioning of the system on Linux and we are not prepared to experiment on it because it involves our core business. Moreover, we have to look at it in terms of the scalability of the system, and we have not seen any real-time cases. Though Oracle is making claims about its components being compatible with Linux we are reluctant to introduce it in our core business.

“Unless and until core software vendors assure us of their compatibility with Linux, the operating system will not see fast adoption. But since more and more established players like HP, IBM and Sun assure compatibility with Linux, in the next few years it is bound to get better acceptability,” says Ram.

Ram says that at HDFC Bank only 0.25 percent of the overall IT investment is set aside for Linux-based applications. However, this may not capture the true nature of deployments since most free/open source software can simply be downloaded off the Internet or copied off CDs. For example, HDFC Bank probably has one of the largest deployments of OpenOffice in India—the alternative office suite runs on a staggering 6,000 desktops at HDFC Bank.

At IDBI Bank, the Oracle Financials implementation on Linux has been live since March 2003. “For us, the confidence came from the fact that we had been running a number of applications, including telebanking, on Linux. But all said and done, it is still an internal application, not a customer-facing application.” Despite the fact that IDBI Bank’s implementation partner, TCS, was more comfortable with Windows, the bank decided to go with Linux when Red Hat, Intel and Oracle stepped forward to offer support for Linux.

Bhai says that today that his management is convinced, thanks to the deployment of Linux, and it will now be easier to roll out further deployments. “Now it is a matter of having more applications. If I develop something in-house, I prefer Linux,” he adds.

Some companies have so much invested in their existing platforms that it is difficult for them to consider shifting. Satish Pendse, CIO, Kuoni Travels says that their mail servers and Web servers are already Linux-based. However, Kuoni is not considering Linux beyond these applications because most of their applications are developed using Microsoft platforms and databases, which can’t be supported on Linux.

Pendse says that a complete changeover will be expensive and is hence not feasible. He adds that since the future roadmap of Linux is uncertain and the availability of expertise is limited, Kuoni is hesitant to move to Linux.

As Linux grows up from its techie roots and makes inroads into the enterprise, issues like the availability of a clear product roadmap, reliable support, availability of applications, developer skills, etc, begin to play a critical role in increasing its popularity.

Even a Linux supporter like Bhai points out that IDBI Bank runs close to 40 different applications and it is therefore unlikely that Linux can be deployed on desktops anytime soon. The future depends on the competitive strategies of companies like Red Hat, Microsoft and others and, of course, on demand from end-users and CIOs.

As IA’s Rastogi points out, “It may take sometime before Linux gains a sizeable share on corporate India’s desktops. Companies have a high value of intellectual capital locked in Windows and Microsoft Office applications. Whilst servers will embrace Linux at a brisk pace, it may be a slow shift to Linux as far as desktops are concerned. It also needs to be as popular as Windows is with users.”

It may take a while for that to happen, but it is clear that from the edge, Linux is now moving into the heart of the network. The last word goes to Rastogi when he says, “I, not only see India, but the whole world adopting Linux in the months and years to come. Linux has an irresistible appeal for any IT manager.”

With inputs from Srikanth R P, Chitra Padmanabhan, Gaurav Patra and Abhinav Singh