Linux: The Operating System of the Cloud

“Cost-Power
Besides its advantages in licensing, Linux is a more cost effective
platform for providers to deploy and customers to target. Partially
because of its usage in small, power sensitive devices, Linux has
been the beneficiary of a great deal of research in lowering total
power consumption. Heavy attention has been paid, for example, to
making Linux more power efficient relative to competitors, via
projects like the tickless kernel. Combined with the power saving
efforts within cloud data centers, Linux is helping to lower the
total solution cost for cloud customers.

“Manageability & Staffing
For enterprises and governments alike, questions of resourcing and
personnel are an important factor in technology deployment and
purchase. In addition to evaluating the merits of a given product
or project, organizations must consider how their existing
skillsets map to the technologies in question, and further, the
ability to hire those skills from the general market in the future.
Fortunately, because managing and developing for Linux are common
skills, the ubiquity of Linux within cloud platforms means that
customers deploying to the cloud can avoid costly re-training for
system administrators and developers. In addition to re-purposing
existing personnel, deployed IT management systems that already
target Linux can be better leveraged with regard to Linux-based
cloud nodes.

“Standards
One of the most common concerns that analysts and other advisers
have for potential cloud customers is the lack of standards, and
the resulting potential for lock-in. For all of the advantages in
deployment speed and flexibility, the nascent stage of many cloud
offerings and the absence of common, agreed upon formats for
packaging, runtimes, and virtual images introduces risk.
Fortunately, customers can leverage Linux as a hedge against this
possibility. The differences between Linux instances, hosted in
cloud environments and those hosted locally or at a data center,
after all, are generally less technical than geographical. By
standardizing on Linux workloads, customers will have the
flexibility to deploy locally or remotely as the economics and
circumstances dictate.”

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