“The past week has seen LinuxWorld 2001 running in New York.
Amongst the host of announcements it could be seen that many
companies not traditionally seen to be bed fellows were getting
behind Linux. With industry giants such as IBM, Hewlett Packard
and Sun now throwing their weight, or at least their marketing,
behind the open source Operating System the question that springs
to mind is whether Linux is now ready to expand in the corporate
arena? Naturally enough, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to
question the viability of Linux.”
“It can be seen that many IT vendors, including the big
companies not just the start-ups, are now taking Linux to be a main
stream offering. The range of services on offer is also beginning
to extend into new areas. This is good news for any organisation
thinking about taking the platform on board. However Linux still
has obstacles to overcome, many of these are related to “support”
and usability.”
“In all the news mentioned so far, the one company whose name
illuminates the sky by its absence is Microsoft. Microsoft
alternately attempts to ignore Linux as being unimportant and to
predict that it is doomed to fail. This week, Microsoft’s product
manager for competitive strategies, Doug Miller, has been quoted as
saying that the new Linux kernel was unsuited for widespread
business use. He highlighted recent security issues faced by Linux
and coupled this with a “lack of key enterprise elements” in the
Operating System and questioned whether “Linux should be used at
all”. Microsoft has had its own security issues recently and we
clearly have a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”