“Augustin is pushing the company hard into the market of
large Fortune 500 companies, which could turn out to be far more
lucrative than selling to young tech start-ups. But that Fortune
500 market is significantly more difficult to penetrate.”
“When you look at a lot of these dot-coms, a lot of the guys who
were running them had just gotten out of school where they had been
using Linux and were familiar with it,” Augustin said. “These large
companies take five years to evaluate a new technology, and they
are in no hurry to switch.”
“But VA Linux appears to be making inroads. In a conference call
with analysts, Augustin said the company just closed a deal with an
unnamed financial services provider to sell approximately 1,000
Linux-based systems. He also said the company expects its base of
large corporate accounts to double from 6 percent of total revenues
last quarter to 12 percent in the current quarter.”