“In the world of Linux servers, 2004 was not so much about
revolutionary breakthroughs as it was about consolidation, growing
maturity, and ‘corporatization.’ In many ways it’s like the booming
renewable energy industry. The age of hippies sitting on hillsides
dreaming of windmills replacing coal and nuclear plants has passed.
In their place are Fortune 500 suits–a less idealistic phase but a
necessary one that propelled wind power from the far fringes into
the energy mainstream.“Similarly, Linux appears to be transitioning successfully from
the outer rim of the enterprise galaxy to the very hub of the
server mainstream. While a few of the pioneering companies remain,
like Red Hat and Penguin Computing, big names like IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, Novell, and Dell are now driving the growth of the
platform…”