Linux Looking Like the Enterprise Way to Go

"With the advent of v2.6, [Linux] has become much more reliable, scalable and robust," says Hans Sparkes, head of enterprise Linux with IT services company Unisys. "Before that it just wasn't good enough. A year ago, Gartner was saying 'evaluate it'; now they're saying 'implement it.'"

The open source Linux operating system is making steady inroads into the world's application servers , where it's supplanting Unix and Windows as the environment of choice. That's received wisdom, but what's the reality?

A study by research group Peerstone at the end of 2004 showed that while two-thirds of ERP (enterprise resource planning) users were running their software on Unix platforms, that operating system (OS) -- and Windows too -- is slowly losing ground to Linux variants.

Intel's Server Rise

At the time, 20 percent of ERP users expected to ditch Unix, and most of those were going toward open source. That fact is recognized by ERP suppliers like SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) , which have mostly made Linux a key plank of their software strategies.

So, why are people drifting away from Unix toward Linux? Has Linux matured enough to be considered for mission-critical manufacturing systems?

Time was when Unix ruled the roost in high-performance servers for key business applications. In fact, it still has the bulk of the market, but there have been changes in recent years that are eroding its dominance. The first of these is the rise of the Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) architecture.

"Intel inside" may be a familiar slogan for desktop PCs , but the same processor architecture has become widely used in business systems where its standard nature has led to it being spoken of as a commodity. That's in contrast to Unix processors, which are unique to each server supplier, as are flavors of the Unix OS.

Simpler but Not Free

Driven by the evolution toward commodity hardware , Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) OSes had begun to erode Unix's dominance. But then came Linux. Originally derived from Unix, Linux was developed with similar high-performance characteristics and can run on Intel processors. However, until just a couple of years ago, it was only suitable for non-mission critical applications such as Web serving.

That changed in 2003 with the development of version 2.6 of the Linux kernel -- the core of the OS -- which could now run on servers with 32 processors instead of just two or four. That's what made high-performance application serving possible.

"With the advent of v2.6, it has become much more reliable, scalable and robust," confirms Hans Sparkes, head of enterprise Linux with IT services company Unisys (NYSE: UIS) . "Before that it just wasn't good enough. A year ago, Gartner was saying 'evaluate it'; now they're saying 'implement it.'"

The impulse for such a ringing endorsement is that Linux's ability to make use of commodity computing platforms has brought serious potential for savings. Linux is often thought of as "free," but what is actually free is the kernel. To use it for application serving, you have to buy a "distribution," which is a full-blown OS developed on top of the kernel. The real advantage of Linux, however, comes from the potential to simplify your infrastructure and its management.

Just Do It

"With Linux being available on Intel boxes, you can break the link between the OS and the hardware," says Sparkes. "Many businesses have lots of servers inherited from many stages in their life, but by standardizing on Linux on Intel, you can take the numbers down dramatically and achieve a lower cost per transaction."

One company that has taken advantage of Linux's ability to replace Unix is Shrewsbury-based automotive pressings manufacturer Stadco -- something of an early adopter. It was back around the turn of the millennium that the company decided to trial Linux for its QAD ERP software. At the time, the company was involved in a joint venture that was setting up a plant in Brazil, and this was the perfect opportunity to try Linux, says Group Systems Manager David Lloyd.

"It proved successful," he says. "It didn't fail, was robust and performed well, so we decided that the next new business we established would be run on Linux."

Now the company runs QAD on Linux at three of its UK plants and one in Germany, with its newly opened plant in Powys being the latest. At first, it used Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) Linux distribution but has now standardized on IBM (NYSE: IBM) rack-mounted servers, which come with SuSe Linux.

"In moving from Red Hat to SuSe, we only found one piece of scripting that didn't work -- and we put that right within hours," says Lloyd. "We've used it to run mission critical servers, and it's proved itself."

In fact, so impressed was Stadco that the company has since also developed browser-based engineering management, estimating, preventative maintenance and breakdown management systems all on Linux. Some tribute