Linux- Gaining Ground

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Threatened by the Penguin Contd...

Valloppillil felt that the main advantage of the open-source movement was its ability to bring together the IQs of millions of developers through the Internet, which made its software superior. Microsoft downplayed the whole episode by terming it as a technical analysis of an engineer and not as the official stand of the company over the Linux issue. But many analysts felt that it was clear from the internal memos, that Microsoft's employees were considering Linux a serious threat to the company, and they were not happy with the company's response to the situation.

Meanwhile in IBM, an employee survey in 1999 found that most IBM employees felt that the next big trend in the industry would be Linux in servers. In response to its survey findings, IBM announced that Linux would be focal point of its strategy. It also conducted its first 'Linux Summit' about Linux and open source programs, for its employees worldwide. The summit discussed issues relating to Linux and database administration, performance challenges, Java for Linux, and the future of the o/s. IBM also announced an increase in its research on Linux to turn it into a comprehensive o/s which could be used for enterprise solutions also. This move from IBM further strengthened the Linux movement and gave it greater credibility. In 2000, IBM announced the allotment of US$ 1 billion for research and development activities on Linux, and it also appointed around 250 engineers to work with the open source community on Linux. Another company, which was facing the heat due to growing popularity of Linux, was Sun.

It was reported that most of Sun's customers were shifting to Linux, which performed similar functions to Solaris¹⁶ at very low prices. While Microsoft chose to downplay the threat posed by Linux, Sun extended its support to Linux. It had a two-pronged strategy to deal with Linux: offering servers with Linux for serving up web pages, and beefing up its own operating system, Solaris, to stay ahead of Linux.

Scott McNealy, (McNealy), CEO, Sun Microsystems, said "We have a very deliberate plan here. We're going to stay focused. We're not going to do what IBM or HP are doing --- abandoning a 20-year investment in mission-critical Unix operating systems. They're marooning customers." Unlike all other industry analysts, Sun stated that Linux's impact would be greater in the desktop markets and it announced its plans to begin selling desktop computers with Linux applications.

However, analysts felt that it would be very difficult for Linux to be successful in desktop markets, as shifting from Microsoft applications to other Linux-supported applications would be very costly. Al Gillen, IDC analyst, commented, "Microsoft won the desktop battle a long time ago."¹⁷

By 1999, Microsoft woke up to the threat from Linux and started its campaign to counter the growth of Linux. In 1999, Microsoft created a portal - 'Linux Myths' - questioning the performance and reliability of Linux. Through this portal, Microsoft challenged the five claims of the Linux community -

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16] Solaris is the computer operating system that Sun Microsystems provides for its family of Scalable Processor Architecture-based processors as well as for Intel-based processors. Sun's Scalable Processor Architecture is 32 and 64 bit microprocessor architecture from Sun.
17] The Linux Uprising, BusinessWeek, March 3, 2003.