[Linux-aus] Who can make sense of Gartner's prognostications?

[Les Bell]

Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au wrote:

>>
What's particularly strange is that Linux's deployment characteristics
normally follow a path where an organisation which deploys it, ends up
deploying many many more systems over time.
<<

Correctamento. And what Gartner may be getting at is that this is not what
organisations *plan* to do. On the face of it, either Gartner or the
reporter are saying that 90% of enterprises will be running Linux
*somewhere*, but on average, they'll use it for only 10-15% of their
infrastructure. Though just what that means is anyone's guess - 10-15% of
boxes? 10-15% of protocols/daemons? The little daemon on my left shoulder
keeps saying that the Linux 10% of the boxes could easily be doing 90% of
the useful work, with nine times as many Windows boxes required just to
ensure that one of them is running at any one time.

This is one of Gartner's weaknesses: they survey their clients about what
they plan to do, then tell them what they're planning to do, and then
reality comes along and . . . well, you can see the result. This approach
strongly favours the status quo, of course.

>>
Normally, the hardest thing is to get Linux in the front door.  Once it
has its foot in, it spreads organically throughout an organisation, and
often usurps many other platforms that were there beforehand.
<<

Bingo. I'm doing some work this week for a company that has just
implemented its first application on Linux (on a mainframe, this is) and
now they want me to run my "LX101: Linux - A Management Perspective" course
so that they can review the opportunities for implementing it elsewhere,
review strengths/weaknesses, project risks, and so on. I predict there'll
be penguins all over the place in 18 months or so. . .

Best,

--- Les Bell, RHCE, CISSP
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]