Why aren more firms rolling out Linux desktops?
I can only give you my view after several weeks in the job, but the statistics I have from IDC is that there are 38 million to 40 million Linux clients currently in use, with a compound annual growth rate of about 19 per cent in terms of adoption. That’s a fairly healthy number of clients, although how that compares with Microsoft’s current installed base, I don’t know. The big challenge for corporates has been that in the past they tended to look at Linux as just a development tool, and maybe not something they could roll out extensively. Our year-on-year growth for last year was 22 per cent, when other IT companies were shrinking, but I think we’re seeing a lot more corporates willing to base a strategy on open source, and the open source market itself has come of age in terms of the offerings. With Linux uptake recently receiving a boost courtesy of the Netbook portable PC format, and its JBoss web services division growing rapidly, Red Hat’s future looks bright. Computing talked to
