Linux lines up its best shot

Linux is gradually overcoming fears about its robustness and scalability, writes Nick Booth. But when will it start making real money for resellers?

There has never been a better opportunity for anyone involved in selling Linux solutions to cash in.

If Microsoft really has angered corporate UK with its various licensing schemes and threats to withdraw support for Windows 95 and 98, as analyst Gartner has reported, then that presents anyone offering a Linux alternative with practically an open goal.

And if you don't put those kinds of chances away at this level, as football pundits say, you're going to get punished.

The next year will tell us whether Linux United (or whatever it is they're calling themselves) really has the big match temperament.

There is no shortage of pundits who believe that Linux is taking off. IDC, Gartner, Aberdeen and the Robert Francis Group all predict a massive upsurge in the employment of Linux, at some stage soon.

That said, whenever analysts agree on something, they are usually wrong. However, IBM did invest $1bn in Linux two years ago to drive the technology, marketing and customers towards this open platform.

So surely there should be some sort of momentum by now. But where is it? Unilever has announced plans for a large-scale Linux deployment, moving its entire global infrastructure, including enterprise resource planning, to Linux.

And in the UK, central buying arm the Office of Government Commerce is planning a purchasing system linking all government departments to run on open source software.

But where is the mass market that was predicted? Linux advocates maintain that this is the calm before a massive storm of demand for open source solutions.

The reason why this has taken longer than anticipated is the lack of Linux products to sell through the channel.

Jo Uthus, vice president of product marketing at Trustix, said: "Software, hardware and services are currently fulfilled through a network of resellers, and this traditional channel is where the products need to be, since this is where the customers usually buy their IT infrastructure."

Trustix is attempting to package Linux solutions to make them more acceptable to end-users. Its contention is that there are a few niggling perception problems that can easily be overcome.

The idea that IT managers are revolting against Microsoft is nonsense, according to Nick Evans, product manager at IT Partnerships, a seasoned reseller of Microsoft solutions.

He insisted that he has seen all these supposed IT manager rebellions before, but people always conclude that they should stick with the devil they know.

"The new licensing schemes at Microsoft were a talking point. But that's all it was. Don't forget that people like talking a lot but, when they have to make a decision it's not going to be for Linux," said Evans. "Who knows what hidden costs are involved with Linux?"

Evans may be saying what is expected of a Microsoft partner, but a number of independent experts agree with him.

Clive Longbottom, service director at business intelligence company Quocirca, believes that IT managers are revolting against the Microsoft behemoth.

But he goes on: "Whereas many IT managers would like to look at alternatives to Microsoft, they realise that this brings with it a certain amount of doubt, particularly for the life of the supplier.

"There's a risk of high support costs, a lack of compatibility with the rest of the world and a massive end-user retraining cost."

He agrees with Evans's view that the threat of Linux might be used simply as a bargaining tool to get a better deal on licensing.

"What the IT manager is looking for is a lever against Microsoft; some means of making a Select agreement more palatable," explained Longbottom.

At the server end of the business, Microsoft is seen as just one of many tools available, and IT managers are more pragmatic over how they view Windows 2000.

According to Quocirca's research, companies with any flavour of Windows Server are not actively reviewing its use, but are upgrading from old versions to Windows 2000.

"What we have found is that the majority of Linux implementations are taking share from other forms of Linux, primarily Solaris. Microsoft has not lost a great deal of business in this space," said Longbottom.

"We believe that, when it come to the crunch, most IT managers will go for the safe bet - especially at the client side."

If the perception of Linux is going to be elevated in the minds of IT buyers, it is important that its presentation to the market looks a bit more convincing.

The main Linux distributors are minnows in comparison to the denizens of the software industry. And while each distributor has geographical strengths, no single Linux distributor has the global reach or the resources to provide the back-up required by large corporations and independent software vendors.

"So large consultancies and systems integrators will be providing the majority of the support for open source software to enterprises," according to Mark Blowers, senior research analyst at the Butler Group.

Unless, of course, the products are offered by a new method, or the skills gap is suddenly breached.

Another hurdle to overcome is the common concern about the security of open source software. The argument goes that as the source code is visible, so are any potential security problems.

There are two ways to respond to this. The Linux design process makes it inherently stable and secure, with extensive use of peer review producing more dependable software.

In addition, when a potential security weakness is identified, members of the Linux and open source developer community - both vendors and independent developers - immediately address the issue and write fixes.

After peer validation, these can then be posted to the internet and applied by users. The advantage of this approach is the speed of response.

"It has been reported that Linux fixes are delivered six to 10 times faster than the critical updates and patches provided by Microsoft," said Blowers.

The perception that Linux is no more than a hobbyist's piece of freeware continues to overshadow the three major benefits of Linux.

The arguments about the benefits of cheaper software licensing and maintenance, cheaper hardware and greater reliability compared with proprietary general purpose operating systems are being lost in the confusion over what Linux really represents.

If it was a brand belonging to one company, it would probably be desperately trying to change its image.

Ironically, some of its early deployments have demonstrated the values that should be projected to end-users. One company claimed a 30 per cent saving on maintenance because Linux stability meant fewer upgrades, patches and scheduled reboots.

Unfortunately, the people behind Linux do not seem to have Microsoft's genius for maximising the potential publicity coup this represents.

You can be sure that a Microsoft partner that offered such a glowing testament would not remain anonymous and would be persuaded to evangelise the product at every opportunity.

Nevertheless, pundits maintain that the community of Linux distributors and resellers is getting there, slowly. The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) is helping to establish confidence.

An independently governed, non-profit organisation, it is supported by 21 companies and managed by senior executives from IBM, Hewlett Packard and Computer Associates.

It provides the hardware facilities to test Linux and, working with distributors and services companies, develops data centre and telecoms class enhancements for Linux and its open source stack. All code generated by OSDL is made available to the Linux community.

Opinions differ on which niches resellers should be attacking. Some analysts, such as US-based AMR, maintain that Linux should be considered for non-mission-critical applications where cost and reliability are critical factors, adding that corporate policies should be refined with guidelines for evaluating and using open source software.

The UK-based Butler Group says the opposite. Blowers insisted that the strengths of Linux (like its reliability) indicate that it is more suitable for mission-critical use.

It can come unstuck only because it lacks the tools, management and utilities bundled into proprietary Unix offerings such as AIX and Solaris, which are tested on the hardware on which they run. This problem, according to Blowers, is being addressed by software vendors.

One vendor looking at the problem is Trustix. It argues that Linux is a toolbox for resellers and requires highly skilled engineers to install, manage and keep it up to date.

So something needs to be done to make the delivery of solutions easier. This is why Trustix offers pre-packaged products, sold through the channel and based on Linux, that solve all the usual problems found when introducing a Linux distribution into the channel.

Trustix's products include a file server, a firewall, a proxy/caching server, and web and mail server products, all with a management GUI running in Windows and a 'simplified' installation routine.

This reduces the time spent for the resellers and distributors when bundling Linux with hardware. It promises to keep the software up to date as well, with automatic downloads from Trustix's repositories.

"You do not want to get into Linux distribution as a reseller. Go for Linux-based products, pre-packaged with the operating system, with integrated management and configuration tools," said Uthus.

"This allows the reseller to either sell the configuration as a service or let the customers use Linux on the desktop."

Trustix provides products based on Linux to handle infrastructure tasks, such as email, firewalls and file-sharing, while being compatible and managed from Windows. This at least gives Linux a foot in the door.

Microsoft's licensing plans have helped create demand for Linux that has been lacking previously, according to Uthus. "Now resellers' experience is that their customers want alternatives to the Microsoft scheme they are being asked to buy into."

A compromise is needed, she said, because the end-user does not want to tinker with the nitty gritty details of Linux.

They realise that they have to give up the ease-of-use of Windows and they fear the unknown, which is how most people think of open source software today.

It is this lack of ambition that will blow it for the Linux camp, argues Mru Patel, head of desktop sales at Sun Microsystems. The vendor will have no problem exploiting the situation with its own proprietary version of what was once open source software.

"The licensing changed everything and now end-users feel backed up against the wall. If they must spend money, they say, they want to look at the alternatives," explained Patel.

"Going from Windows 98 to XP will almost certainly force them to upgrade all the PCs and servers, and they're asking themselves what return they'll get on that investment."

The difference between most Linux vendors, which are relative small fry to the behemoth that is Sun, is that the latter can really assert itself on the market.

"We've been out and seen 2,000 customers, from large corporates to government departments, SMEs to schools, and we're pushing in a big way," said Patel.

Whether Sun manages to 'rescue' those backed-up IT managers, or whether they wriggle out of its grasp, remains to be seen.

The next couple of years should see Linux making headway in the market for file and print servers, replacing NT.

Over the next five years it will become increasingly dominant as a server operating system. Ultimately, according to the Butler Group, it will pervade everywhere from the desktop to file and print servers to mainframes.

But these are all events at some unspecified distance in the future. No one knows how long it will take to reach that destination.

The argument that Linux will be expensive to support smacks of desperation, said Jasmin Ul-Haque, director of marketing at SuSE Linux.

Yes, there is concern about a perceived shortage of Linux skills, "but many universities are actively promoting Linux, and these students are leaving academia and entering industry with at least an understanding of Linux and the benefits".

That is all very well, but end-users need convincing now. Some impressive names are coming on board.

"All the major vendors such as Dell, IBM and Hewlett Packard are taking it seriously and customers are demanding it. There is a massive market opportunity for resellers to tap into," explained Federico Musto, general manager EMEA at Red Hat.

"The appeal is across the board, from oil companies and motor manufacturers, through retail, finance and media to government and the public sector."

But it is the financial sector that Linux distributor SCO is really excited about. "They will always move for something that is more secure. This sector has the largest number of in-house bespoke applications," said Porter Olsen, SCO's Linux product manager.

Who's who in the Linux jungle
In the open source software market there are no vendors, only distributors. They all hope to gain from offering services and support, or the sale of utilities and tools.

The differentiator, therefore, is the quality of that support, and the added value of the utilities that the distributors bundle with the distribution.

There are other endless variations of distributor, some of which are listed here in order of the increasing silliness of their names: Corel, Debian GNU, FreeBSD, Linux Router, Mandrake, MKLinux, Phat, Slackware and Yellow Dog.

When the market rationalises there probably will be three significant distributors of enterprise-class Linux in the near future: Red Hat, UnitedLinux and Red Flag.

Red Hat was founded specifically to exploit the use of Linux, and other open source software, by providing the added value of business functionality, support and services.

Advanced Server is its business-class offering, incorporating scalability functionality from a future release of the Linux kernel to provide the features required by businesses.

The UnitedLinux organisation was established by four geographically focused distributors of Linux - SuSE, SCO (formerly Caldera), Conectiva and TurboLinux - to provide an alternative distribution at the business level to Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.

Each of the companies will distribute to their historical geographies: SuSE in Europe, SCO in North America, Conectiva in South America and TurboLinux in Asia/Pacific.

It is revealing that all the big independent software vendors, including IBM, Hewlett Packard and Computer Associates, have supported this alliance. This reflects the fact that Red Hat is not predominant in all geographies.

CONTACTS:

Trustix (01625) 535 910
www.trustix.com

Sun (01252) 420 000
www.sun.com

Butler Group (01482) 608 355
www.butlergroup.com

Red Hat (01483) 734 943
www.europe.redhat.com

SuSE Linux (020) 8846 3918
www.suse.co.uk

SCO (01923) 813 787
www.sco.com