“In the past 12 months, strong sales of Linux and its broader
establishment in important server and workstation markets, coupled
with its growing application base, finally signaled its emergence
into young adulthood. Moreover, Linux’s innate cost-effectiveness
and ease of development nudged key proprietary Unix players, such
as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems, into the open
software world.”
“Nevertheless, the little-operating-system-that-could still
is not running its tracks into Microsoft’s vast base of installed
users in the enterprise computing, server and desktop marketplaces.
And Linux holds little threat of derailing Windows anytime
soon, says Dan Kuznetsky, an analyst at IDC, Framingham,
Mass.”
“The market is making the pie bigger,” Kuznetsky says. “They are
not taking a slice of the pie from each other.” Due to its
competitive solutions in infrastructure, cache proxy and
print-serving solutions, as well as high-performance technical
applications and Web-serving, Linux now holds a 24 percent share of
the server market, according to IDC research.”