Dorazilo mailem - GIGA GROUP (dlouhe)

[Karel Salavec]

GIGA GROUP CONFIRMS SUNBELT LINUX SURVEY RESULTS

The Giga Group, one of the USA's largest companies delivering technology

and management advice to IT decision makers mentions that their own
market
research confirms the recent results of the Sunbelt survey. An excerpt
of
an advisory by their VP Richard Fichera read as follows:

67% of respondees are already running Linux on one or more machines.
20% are not
12% are thinking about it.

Fichera: "This is very much in keeping with our client reports of
extremely heterogeneous environments, with the average enterprise
having between three and five OSs in regular use".

What are companies doing with Linux?
First was WebServer, then EmailServer, next Desktop, fourth File/print.

Fichera: "Note the total absence of Linux as a database server
in these responses, sending the message that if you elect to use Linux
as a database server now, you are definitely becoming an early adopter.
On the other hand, from a vendor perspective it also can be interpreted
to mean that the opportunities for incremental unit growth for database
vendors is significant, given that we have a widely proliferated stable
platform with low DBMS penetration".

The 2 Biggest Benefits? STABILITY AND PERFORMANCE.
   (no particular drawbacks were significant.)

Fichera: "This response is completely in keeping with our client
feedback,
and cuts to the heart of the Linux debate - it is inherently more stable

than NT, which seems to be the most important aspect of Linux from our
client's perspective. Added performance on some applications is a bonus,

but the minor differences would not be enough to interest anyone if
Linux
were not significantly more stable".

How many Linux servers are you planning to add?
How many NT servers are you planning to add?

Fichera" "These last two response validate our client feedback that both

environments are growing, both at a healthy clip, and probably faster
than
the UNIX market in general. Note that without a detailed statistical
profile of the responding organizations we cannot infer real market
growth
rates, although statistical common sense tells that with a sample size
of
2000, something would have to be very weird for us not to draw a
defensible conclusion of growth from these results".

The Giga Group and Sunbelt Software will be doing future surveys in
cooperation. For more info about the Giga Group: http://www.gigaweb.com/

For Jesse Berst's opinion about Linux deployment as opposed to NT, see:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3144.html