ZDNet: What’s the future of Linux? (Gartner)

What is the acceptance of Linux in the
enterprise?
Gartner detects a greater level of comfort in deploying Linux among
project development teams. They also detect more willingness to run
Linux as front-end application servers, but, in large enterprises,
IS directors and CIOs still are concerned about support and tend to
use their vendor support on Unix and mainframes as the reference
comparison for that expected of Linux.

What is the scalability of Linux, and how far will it
go?
Gartner is not aware of Linux systems running well beyond four-way
SMPs. Although Linux improvements are ongoing, Gartner believes
that more enhancements will be necessary in its ability to deal
with high levels of context switching and threading so that shared
utilization of multiple CPUs by applications can enable performance
to scale efficiently beyond four processors. A reasonable road map
would suggest that Linux will scale to eight-way servers by
year-end 2002 and further (12- to 16-way) in 2004.

What applications are using Linux and open
source?
Certainly, it has proved itself in numerous infrastructure
environments, such as caching, VPN networking, DNS and proxy, as
well as Web server environments. An up-and-coming deployment is in
numerous replicated deployments, such as in-store controllers,
kiosks, rentals and reservation systems, and thin-client access to
databases. Other applications are in: technical and scientific
compute clusters, digital entertainment and special effects, Web
sites and portals using e-commerce stacks (e.g., Lutris Enhydra,
Red Hat e-commerce, IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic),
telecommunications (routers, switches), appliance functions (e.g.,
firewalls, proxy, VPN, DNS, XML, SSL, e-mail), file-and-print
services, some small/medium business applications (e.g.,
accounting, e-mail and messaging) and other front-end applications
(e.g., SAP).

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