“I see changes, and virtually all of them are good. One of the
hard-sell issues with Linux has always been, “It’s free, so how can
it be any good?” Each month for the past six years, we have
addressed this in Linux Journal and we have had some serious
successes. But, you continue needing to address it as new companies
consider Linux. With one company offering a choice — UNIX or
Linux — you can offer the potential customer a choice.
Those of us who have been in the Linux camp for any length of
time know that in most cases, Linux outperforms SCO UNIX. Allowing
the customer to choose without having to change vendors or support
organizations should help Linux penetrate new markets
quickly.”
“The next big change is applications. While the number of
applications available for Linux is growing, it needs to grow
faster for Linux to gain significant market share in areas other
than web and file service. Having UNIX and Linux coming from the
same company will make it much easier to get applications written,
ported, and most importantly, supported in both environments. SCO’s
huge existing support structure is a big win here.”
“Finally, SCO along with Sequent and IBM have been working
together on what is called the Monterey project. This project aims
to deliver a single UNIX product line spanning the Intel IA-32,
IA-64 and Power PC platforms. Intel has been working with IBM to
ensure that the product is optimized for the IA-64 architecture.
Having this cooperation under one roof — a Linux-based roof
— is going to make it much easier to go head-to-head with NT
for server solutions.”