Research conducted by IDC in February 2009 confirms the continued replacement of Unix by Linux on servers. That is a trend we have been seeing for 10 years but there is one methodology caution in the survey: the 'n' uses only respondents that deploy Windows along with Unix and/or Linux and other operating software. It appears to exclude the very substantial demographic that uses only Windows as its server operating software.
A complementary summary of the research is available from Novell (NVLL). It is full of good statistics on general IT budget planning and industry trends as well.
Interestingly, IDC said:
"Nearly half of the survey participants stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of respondents plan to evaluate, deploy, or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months."
This indicates to me the limited support of virtualization among older Unix products rather than any particular Linux accelerant. Of course, I believe Linux is UNIX--but that's another blog post.
IDC also surveyed about adoption plans related to Linux as a single-user operating system. The top factors among the sample are security/reliability, usability/familiarity, and application and peripheral support. Given that the sample surveyed is made up of open choice adherents and not the extremes of either Microsoft or open-source bigotry (see Methodology note above), this is probably a good indicator of what will drive the emerging netbook market.
-- Dennis Byron
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