Perhaps more notable, in August HP introduced what it claimed was the first preinstalled Linux notebook PC from a major hardware vendor. Linux is well established as a server operating system, but its viability on corporate desktops (and laptops) is a fiercely debated issue, particularly within the halls of Microsoft, which has found itself on the defensive as many competitors position Linux in direct opposition to Microsoft's products.

Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems is sponsoring a long list of open-source projects and says it plans to release its Solaris operating system under an open-source license by the end of the year. And in August, Computer Associates International Inc. released its Ingres Enterprise Relational Database for Linux into the open-source community. CA says that marked the first time a major enterprise software vendor had collaborated directly with the open-source community to deliver enterprise database technology. That may be for the scholars to debate, as IBM's database announcement preceded CA's by one day.

As they knock one another over in an attempt to prove their allegiance to Linux, vendors do seem to be removing two often-voiced knocks against open source: questionable reliability and lack of customer support.

"One of the criticisms is that with open source, you're on your own; you have to get help from newsgroups or second-tier companies [that lack] the stature of bigger vendors," says Weinberg. "These larger sponsors are now putting Linux into their core strategy. The [justification] for using Linux in critical operations is on a par with other top-tier software solutions."

Furthermore, Weinberg says, enterprises are developing internal expertise in Linux by refocusing people with Unix backgrounds, and there are many sources of support within the open-source community. Time and a critical mass of support have combined to make Linux more reliable, he says, in large part because of continuous improvements by the OSDL and the larger open-source community. This, and the cost savings from the absence of licensing fees, have enterprises taking greater notice of the open-source movement than ever before.

Open to Open Source
Aerospace manufacturer The Boeing Co., based in Chicago, had been following open-source developments for years before it began purchasing Linux-based servers about three years ago. Impressed with the performance of the operating system, about a year ago the company launched a policy to migrate from proprietary Unix servers to Linux-based machines for its IT infrastructure.

Boeing uses commercial versions of Linux, such as Red Hat's, so it can get vendor support if any problems arise. As a result, the life-cycle support costs of the operating system aren't much different from those of such Unix systems as Sun's Solaris or HP's HP-UX, says Vaho Rebassoo, director and chief architect, computing and network operation, at Boeing.

The main benefit, Rebassoo says, comes from not being locked into any one hardware vendor. "With Linux, the most compelling argument is that instead of buying hardware and software packages from Sun or HP, we can put Linux onto [any] Intel equipment," which gives the company more flexibility in hardware selection and ultimately will lead to cost savings. Considering that Boeing has more than 7,000 servers, those savings can be considerable.

Rebassoo says it's a myth that open-source software is unreliable. "That being said, we would have reservations about putting our most-complex [engineering and airplane design] applications on Linux," he says. "But it will be only a matter of time before we move there."

Another Linux devotee is the nearby Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest futures exchange in the United States. The exchange is gradually increasing its deployment of Linux and now runs 35 percent of its Unix servers on the open-source platform, using software from Red Hat. Its goal is to reach 40 percent by the end of the year and ultimately replace 100 percent of its Unix-based servers with machines that run Linux.

Chicago Mercantile will likely never run Linux on its most computing-intensive systems, such as the mainframe databases that store massive volumes of data, says CTO Charlie Troxel. But it has been pleased with how open source has performed at the server level.

Total cost of ownership was the initial goal of the exchange's move to Linux. Troxel estimates that the Linux-based servers cost five to seven times less than the Solaris servers did before Sun lowered its pricing to close the gap somewhat. But Chicago Mercantile is also seeing performance increases compared with Unix, he says: "Performance of the Linux servers in some cases is 10 times better than on the servers we had been using. So for less money, we're getting far better results." In addition to the support it gets from Red Hat, Chicago Mercantile is retraining its Unix technical-support team for Linux.

For some newer technology vendors, putting Linux at the heart of their offerings allows them to go to market at a lower price point. InsiteOne Inc., a Wallingford, Connecticut, company that provides storage and archiving of digital medical images and other health-care data, has been an open-source user since it was founded in 1999. InsiteOne installs HP ProLiant servers at customer sites to run high-capacity imaging applications, and uses Linux on all those servers as well as in its data center. The databases that the company uses to store medical images are powered by MySQL.

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