State of Linux in the Indian enterprise

The level of interest of CIOs towards Linux as an enterprise platform is rising. By Manjari Juneja

Linux has been around for almost two decades now and it is a derivative of a fantastic software development model namely open source. It has been hardened over a period of time in a variety of verticals and segments almost all over the world. The world’s most demanding enterprises are relying on Linux to run their mission-critical applications. For example, some of the world’s largest exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Deutsche Borse and the Tokyo Stock Exchange run their trading platforms on Linux.

Today large ERP implementations are running on enterprise Linux. ERP applications by their nature are mission-critical as enterprises depend on ERP applications for their business models. Many enterprises right from Verizon, Hilti, Banco Pastor, YPF globally to Indian Express, Carnation, Great Offshore, Hikal and Sheela Foam in India run their SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft etc. on Linux.

Not just big but thousands of mid and small organizations have also realized that Linux provides a stable, reliable and secure platform to run their businesses. When asked why, near zero unplanned downtime, not having to reboot a server for months and years and minimal ongoing management/attention in production are characteristic responses from CIOs.

In the government vertical, globally Linux is being used across government agencies to create efficiencies, eliminate vendor lock-in, meet mission-critical IT demands and improve service delivery. Linux is answering the call of government agencies at all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation and collaboration as open source is stable, trustworthy, and secure.

Sandeep Menon, Country Head, Novell India, said, “Linux is being deployed in all the erstwhile mission-critical roles that Unix used to handle traditionally. This includes complex SAP systems controlling factory production lines, high transaction banking applications, real time trading work rooms, travel and reservation booking systems for airlines etc. Our assessment with enterprise CIOs tells us that almost 60% of them already have Linux deployments in some form or the other. Most of them intend to take the deployments deeper into their organizations.”

Addressing pain points

Increasingly, CIOs are only worried about workloads, i.e. a single entity of OS, middleware and application that performs a certain task for them. The obsession with building blocks is decreasing by the day. Now IT heads want to have a flexible workload that can be moved around between physical, virtual and cloud environments. It can be secured to the extent required and managed independently. All of this is simply not possible without the adoption of platform agnostic, open standards based infrastructure software. This is what will drive Linux adoption in the next decade.

Andy Karandikar, Marketing Head - Red Hat India, said, “CIOs are looking to cut costs while catering to increasing demand from business lines. They are looking for returns at multiples of their investment. Linux caters to this requirement perfectly by allowing them to save money while improving scalability, reliability and offering better performance.”

It helps CIOs do more with less. Business demands continue to grow exponentially, while budgets are at best growing marginally. CIOs look at cost savings both in upfront as well as ongoing costs—in other words they scrutinize TCO closely. Performance, scalability, flexibility and freedom of choice without lock-ins are other benefits.

Freedom from vendor lock-in

Open source, open standards and interoperability go hand in hand. Linux is developed by a large community with support and code contributions from vendors such as Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Cisco and HP.

One of the best examples of this is the innovation happening on x86 platforms both from Intel and AMD. A lot of this innovation is largely based on Linux and first certified on the platform.

On the server front, companies deploying Linux have plenty of choice. Because of open standards you are not locked in at the hardware or software level and support is widely available.

Karandikar added, “With Red Hat, a customer gets over 1,000+ certified hardware platforms to choose from on the server as well as the storage front. Pretty much any hardware, old or new, including 32-/64-bit x86 servers, Itanium, mainframes etc. are supported. Even the latest Intel Nehalem EX and AMD Magny-Cours are certified. With a Red Hat subscription, the customer also gets freedom to upgrade from one version to another (e.g. from RHEL 4 to RHEL 5), 32-bit to 64-bit etc. at no additional cost.”

Menon said, “Linux is the only OS platform that can run from mobile devices, to PCs to x86/RISC servers and mainframes. Interoperability is something that Novell has put a lot of weight behind. While open platform solutions have traditionally ensured that interoperability exists between platforms that are based on open standards, we went a step further and did a lot of work for interoperability with Microsoft environments as well. Customers deploying Linux, also use Microsoft solutions in some form or the other. Ensuring that the environments interoperate is a win-win for everyone in the long run.”

Slowly but steadily, enterprises are deploying Linux and other open source software to run their mission-critical applications.

According to a Gartner study, open source software will be embedded in 80% of commercial software by 2012. The report said that, “By 2012, 80% of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology. Many open source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.”

Bhavish Sood, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said, “Linux has made its presence felt in the open source arena. The maturity of other open source software is slow as compared to Linux. Clients continue to gain a cost advantage by using Linux. Obviously there are certain challenges in its adoption like indemnification, perception among people that Linux is not suitable for mission-critical applications and dependence on Unix subscriptions.”

Challenges in adoption

Linux is still relatively young software and it has matured over the years to become robust and reliable. Today, Linux runs 446 out of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. Last year the software industry grew by just 2% while the Linux market grew in high double digits. The availability of skilled manpower, existing vendor lock in of various forms and user resistance to change are some challenges.

Lack of awareness and proof points to showcase and emphasize the fact that this really works are also hurdles. Enterprises and partners still carry a perception that Linux is 'geeky' and good enough only for edge applications. They are still conservative with regard to some of the benefits of Linux such as freedom of choice, lower TCO, greater performance, reliability, security and ease of migration. Secondly, it is the FUD created by bigger proprietary vendors that dissuades enterprises from adopting Linux.

Novell says that service oriented architecture is the framework of the immediate future. The fact that open standards hold the key for successful deployments of SOA models in the future is a significant factor that we should not lose sight of. Tomorrow’s IT giants may be different from today. When a large SaaS vendor decides to create his offering framework and buy the building blocks from traditional IT vendors, what is he likely to buy? Proprietary infrastructure software, where the vendor will have an ability to control the business? Or open solutions that hand them the commercial and deployment flexibility? The answer is self evident.

There is a perception in the market that skill sets and support on Linux are hard to come by, which is incorrect.

Linux has been hardened and made robust with significant participation from Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Novell, Cisco etc. SELinux was created in collaboration with the National Security Agency (NSA), USA. It is an integral part of the Linux kernel. Being Open Source ensures rapid innovation. It is developed with the customer being an integral part of the development cycle (if not the initiator). At the end of the day, this is an option that no CIO can afford to ignore.

manjari.juneja@expressindia.com