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| DATE | 2004-05-05 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] More on Redhat Desktops
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Software Maker Wants Europe's Desktops
By Jennifer L. Schenker
05/05/04 6:35 AM PT
Red Hat's strategic push onto the desktop PC is further validation that Linux is good enough for certain types of corporate use, said Ted Schadler, a vice president for research at Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Red Hat, the leading seller of open-source software, outlined on Tuesday a push into the global market for desktop systems, an area where the grassroots Linux software has so far failed to make a dent against Microsoft.
The North Carolina company is the largest repackager and seller of the open-source Linux system, which has a growing following among companies and government agencies that want an alternative to Microsoft's dominant Windows software.
But Linux is mostly used for heavy-duty back-office computers and has been criticized for being too complicated for the average personal computer user.
Red Hat's announcement, made in London, was expected to include details of a trial that Red Hat has been conducting with the German insurance company LVM. The German company is evaluating whether to install 8,400 Linux-based desktop systems, said Red Hat's chief executive, Matthew Szulik. Szulik said Red Hat would also outline plans with Wind River Systems, a California developer of software and hardware, to help corporate customers of Linux systems integrate wireless devices.
Red Hat's Strategic Push
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Red Hat's strategic push onto the desktop PC is further validation that Linux is good enough for certain types of corporate use, said Ted Schadler, a vice president for research at Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is the first time in a long time that Microsoft is not a guaranteed winner in the corporate desktop, he said, referring to user-friendly Linux PC systems.
Both Red Hat and SuSE, a German company that was purchased by Novell late last year, are making big pushes in Europe with Linux, which was created by a Finnish computer programmer in 1991. Today SuSE is the clear market leader, Schadler said, because it has already built up a large European base.
Demand for Alternative Desktop
Demand for alternative desktop software particularly in Europe and Asia is driving some of the industry's biggest computer vendors to make Linux part of their offerings.
Hewlett-Packard recently said it would begin shipping some high- end desktop computers that run Novell SuSE. International Business Machines is also shipping Linux-based desktop computers, and Sun Microsystems recently announced a deal with Wal-Mart to sell cheap PCs using Linux and Sun's StarOffice, an open-source suite of word processing and spreadsheet programs.
In Europe, governments have granted contracts for Linux-based systems in France, England, Ireland, Italy, Hungary and, most recently, the Bulgarian city of Kardjali, which this week said it was shifting to Linux on desktops and servers with the aid of the local Internet Society and the United Nations Development Program.
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Among the most notable Linux projects is a contract with the city of Munich involving some 14,000 Linux desktops across seven departments. Still, Brian Gammage, an analyst at Gartner in Stamford, Connecticut, said the Linux hype is exceeding the reality. For every Linux contract publicized, he said, There are 20 other similar cities and councils across Europe that are awarded to Microsoft, and not one of these contracts makes the press.
Gartner estimates that no more than 5 percent of desktop computers worldwide will be Linux-based in 2009. Open-source software like Linux is shared and modified freely by programmers; companies like Red Hat sell particular versions as well as technical support for the systems.
Although there are a lot of governments using Linux on the desktop in Europe, no one seems to know just how many, said Giancarlo Succi, director of the Center for Applied Software Engineering in the Facility of Computer Science at Italy's Free University of Bozen.
Succi is also the director of the Consortium for Open Source in Public Administration, a group that plans to spend the next year studying government Linux desktop projects in Italy, Hungary, Ireland and Denmark to measure costs and changes in productivity after a switch from Windows to Linux.
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