The Penguin's desktop goal
Linux has strayed from its server hunting grounds to make inroads onto the desktop. But it still has a tough fight to upset Microsoft's dominance, writes Guy Matthews.
Linux seems to excite the sort of strong feelings that other technologies can only dream of. When did you last hear anyone getting vehement about networked storage, or seriously exercised about CRM?
But take a stand on open source operating systems (OS) and you could be feted or jeered, depending on the company you're keeping.
Feelings run high because so much is at stake. On the one side is ranged the biggest software company on the planet and its vast user base, on the other a rag bag of forces whose hopes of seeing Windows undermined rest on what seems to be an increasingly serious alternative.
The battleground on which the two have been testing each other to date is largely server-side. But recently there has been a growing conviction among Linux apologists that the open source OS can hack it on the desktop too.
Can they be serious? Linux as a desktop rival to Microsoft? Linux head to head with the most geographically distributed brand name in the world?
CRN spoke first to Cynthia Crossley, who heads Microsoft's Windows Client division in the UK, and asked if she felt Linux was set to be a major desktop force any time soon.
"We're not seeing much happening in the Linux desktop market in the UK. It accounts for about one per cent of desktops at the moment," she said.
"Linux still tends to be concentrated among highly technical users who have the ability to do the necessary technical customisation. It's still on its way up a steep commercial learning curve.
"We're far more concerned to focus our efforts on web services, because that's what people are actually talking about."
The desktop, anyway, is a limiting area for discussion, in Crossley's view.
"Issues like return on investment and total cost of ownership [TCO] are much broader than which OS you're using. It's not just about the desktop but the entire ecosystem," she said.
Leaving the pack
Not a bit of it, according to Gary Nugent, UK channel manager at Sun. And he claims high independent authority.
"IDC is telling us it is seeing significant compound growth in desktop Linux over the next few years," he said.
"Our evidence is that a good 50 per cent of Fortune 2000 companies are actively considering a desktop Linux experiment, and there are many such projects on the way."
It is all good news for the channel. "It's important for resellers, because if you can lower the cost of the plumbing, then there's more money on the table for true innovation that delivers competitive advantage," claimed Nugent.
His view is borne out by Terry Fisher, business development manager at reseller Compusys.
"By offering customers a choice, resellers and integrators benefit from the potential savings a user may make by using open source products, which could in turn be spent on additional hardware or Services," he said.
Importantly for Linux, Sun is by no means the only big-name vendor backing it. IBM, for example, has been investing quite heavily in Linux solutions.
According to Adam Jollans, Linux strategy manager at IBM Software, riding both horses is in both IBM's and its partners' interests.
"We wouldn't want our resellers adopting a 'mono' approach. It's all about flexibility," he stated.
"By supporting different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, you give your customers the choice to pick the best solution for their individual needs.
"Having that level of flexibility has helped IBM in the marketplace. We have the broadest portfolio of Linux-based software offerings. We also have all that same software supporting Microsoft Windows."
Jollans believes giving customers the ability to choose what best meets their needs works best.
"By incrementally adding Linux support, resellers stand out from the pack. Linux support can give a reseller an edge over competition that does not offer Linux-based solutions," he explained.
Specifically on the desktop, there is clearly growing interest in using Linux.
"Just look at the city of Munich's decision to move 14,000 desktops to Linux," said Jollans.
"It is starting in specific areas - thin clients, graphics workstations, application development - just like Linux adoption on the server started in specific areas, such as file and print and web servers, before moving to much wider business usage."
For workers needing fixed-function or occasional usage Linux is already a good fit, said Jollans, citing examples such as bank tellers who need to handle a specific set of customer transactions, or factory workers who need to access their company intranet and email during breaks.
"In these cases, the thin-client model with intelligent applications running on a web browser makes enormous sense, and Linux plus Mozilla offers a reliable, cost-effective solution."
Peter Bolton, vice president EMEA at Neoware, supported Jollans's view to a degree.
Although Linux is not currently taking off on the desktop, he said, Microsoft is able to compete on a smaller scale when embedded into a thin-client application simply because of its grip on the market.
"We are a thin-client vendor and 40 per cent of our business is Linux-based. Linux does have limited functions, although it remains popular with the education sector, which seems to have an anti-Microsoft ethos," he explained.
"Within Linux there is more scope for adaptability and tailormade applications, so there is less need for support than you would expect with Microsoft."
Hewlett Packard is another vendor with a Linux stake that sits alongside its Windows support.
Russell Coombes, Linux's business manager at HP, stressed that, like IBM, choice is the name of the game for HP's partners and customers.
Choice approach
"HP has a balanced OS approach with HP-UX, Microsoft, Linux and Open VMS," said Coombes.
"HP understands reasons why customers may want to choose one or all of these operating environments in a server environment. Equally, HP recognises that in a desktop environment customers may wish to choose either Microsoft or Linux.
"Again, HP appreciates and understand this and hence certifies both laptop and desktop products with Linux accordingly."
It would be hard to see how HP could be more accommodating, or be more firmly glued to the fence. But that, obviously, is just part of its nature as a large multi-platform vendor.
Coombes refused to be drawn by specific questions, such as whether Windows or Linux offers the lowest TCO on the desktop.
"TCO is extremely subjective and this is one of the reasons why HP promotes the 'operating system of choice' approach," he said.
"TCO calculations depend on a number of factors, including application use, existing hardware environments, skills, levels of staffing, and so on. As a result, there is no black and white answer to which operating environment provides a lower TCO."
Coombes added that HP still sees the majority of Linux adoption in the server environment, although it has noticed a steady increase of Linux considerations in the client environment.
"HP and its partners have the tools and capabilities to work with customers to evaluate TCO in both the server and client environment," he said.
"As we do not have a proprietary operating system in the commercial desktop and laptop space, licensing costs from Microsoft and subscription costs from Linux distributions will dictate, to an extent, some of the TCO issues."
There are those who fully recognise the strengths of Linux as a server platform but who, try as they might, just can't envisage it working on the client side.
For example, Mark Whitehouse, director of strategic alliances EMEA at LanDesk Software, has never thought Linux could steal market share from Microsoft in the desktop arena.
"Yes, I do see more customers installing Linux for their web-based servers, but never on the desktop. The lack of application support is the limiting factor," he explained.
"Linux works well, if not better, than Microsoft in the web hosting space. One customer told me that his Microsoft-based web servers had to be rebooted at least once a month to maintain reliability; but his Linux-based server had not been rebooted for over six months."
There are others, too, who see the current lack of application support as a Linux desktop killer.
Gavin Williams, technology infrastructure director at Microsoft enterprise integrator Avanade, has huge difficulty imagining how Linux can hope to achieve parity with, let alone leadership over, Windows in the desktop space.
"The major blocker is simply the vast amount of applications in critical use by businesses that are designed for the Windows platform," he argued.
"In terms of compatibility and the ability to migrate users, organisations often have enough challenges dealing with application migration for the Microsoft platform, before they consider the additional effort needed to support them on another platform."
A further sticking point is one of Linux's most commonly cited benefits: the fact that it is free.
"If there is one thing we have all learned through the dotcom crash cycle it is not to believe the noise and hype that may be heard in the market without taking a moment for sober consideration," cautioned Williams.
"For example, the idea of Linux as a 'free' alternative to Windows XP takes a dip when you consider that, on the one hand, no organisation will be adopting the smaller distributions - which will, in the main, be lacking basic features expected by users today - while the larger distributions are charging both licence and support fees."
The fear factor
Others, who are plainly in the open source camp, clearly fear that Linux faces the possibility of slow marginalisation, a kind of gradual assumption of niche status that is neither victory nor defeat.
This is not because of lack of popularity so much as the sheer size of the hill it has to climb.
For example, Stephen Jay, UK managing director of Hansa Business Solutions, which sells accounting and ERP solutions, sees plenty of vendors gradually porting their applications to Linux to take advantage of its superior reliability and performance.
They are also attracted by the "dramatically reduced" virus risks when compared with Windows.
However, he warned that few vendors have yet achieved this port because their underlying architecture is too reliant on Microsoft technologies such as the SQL database.
"Our experience is that Linux is extremely attractive to the majority of our customers, although the fear factor of what is perceived to be a technical solution holds a large number back," he said.
Hansa is unique among ERP and CRM vendors in offering a Linux desktop solution, not just a server version, for companies that have rejected the Microsoft platform altogether.
"Most of our customers are not large corporates but small and medium-sized businesses, and we are seeing an increasing enthusiasm for exploring alternatives to Microsoft Windows as the server operating system," he added.
Jasmin Ul-Haque, director of marketing and communications at SuSE Linux, believes the sheer level of customer interest was the reason for getting involved with the desktop side of the market.
"Several enterprise and public sector customers stated that they wanted a uniform Linux solution to be rolled out on their servers and desktops in several departments," she recalled.
"Hence SuSE allocated research and development resources about 18 months ago, and the result was the SuSE Linux Desktop."
For large organisations there will be a fair amount of testing and planning that will have to be completed before such a major step can be implemented.
"We do not expect large-scale migration from proprietary to Linux software in the short term but are aware of numerous evaluation projects currently taking place."
Ul-Haque conceded that Linux on the desktop is dependent on several key applications being made available to users, but says there are already numerous commercial applications that have been ported to Linux, and they are increasing all the time.
"For most desktop users the office suite OpenOffice is able to handle virtually all of the basic requirements that they have.
"Sun has also put in more R&D effort to improve their StarOffice solution to offer more functionality and support required by professional users," she said.
She claimed SuSE is committed to working with the channel and is one of the first Linux companies to have a comprehensive business partner programme.
"We need to work with an established channel and leverage their expertise and contacts to support a much wider market than would be possible, or even advisable, from SuSE directly.
"Although the Linux market is growing significantly, it is fair to say that it is not a mature market, and hence the channel partners need to receive vendor support, such as training and sales tools, and attractive margins to incentivise their efforts and investment," she said.
Ul-Haque is probably pretty close to the mark when she says resellers generally do not mind if the solution they sell is open source or proprietary, being more concerned with the value of the solution to their clients, the ease with which they can sell them and the margins they can earn.
Linux is a touchy subject for end users and for vendors with a stake in the market. Resellers can't so easily afford the luxury of partiality, since they need to go where the money is, whatever that entails.
At the moment, it looks as though it would be a foolish reseller who ruled out Linux as a potent desktop force in the long term. But long-term prospects don't pay tomorrow's bills.
Munich takes the plunge
The most frequently quoted example of Linux as a desktop force has been Munich's city council, which chose the platform last May for 14,000 desktops.
Carpers say the cost to Munich of migrating to Linux has been more than the cost of upgrading its Windows desktop.
However, there's no doubting the kudos of an implementation that had Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, reportedly jetting in to try, unsuccessfully, to get Munich to change its mind.
Is Munich the classic exception that proves the rule? Or is it a sign of things to come?
Munich officials have been tight-lipped about their motivation.
But analyst Gartner warned that, while not exactly a one-off case, the German city probably took into account many specific factors, such as the localised job creation that integration and implementation entailed, which made its decision more than a straight commercial one.
The Munich case does point to a key emerging area for Linux. Several government agencies around Europe are apparently also looking to Linux for a thin-client approach, where they just need a browser for a dedicated application.
The Asian market, too, is sometimes quoted as an emerging opportunity for Linux success on the desktop.
CONTACTS
Microsoft (0870) 601 0100
www.microsoft.com
Sun (0800) 731 0658
www.sun.com
Avanade (020) 7025 1000
www.avanade.com
LanDesk (0118) 902 6565
www.landesksoftware.co.uk
Neoware (01344) 382 164
www.neoware.com
Hansa Business Solutions (0845) 123 2732
www.hansaworld.com