Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Linux Server Adoption to Intensify Over the Next Five Years

Posted: 13 Oct 2010 08:09 AM PDT

A survey conducted by the Linux Foundation in partnership with Yeoman Technology Group indicates that Linux server adoption is bound to intensify over the next five years. The poll was participated by 1,948 Linux users, with emphasis on 387 respondents that belongs to organizations with $500 million or more a year in revenues or have greater than 500 employees.

According to the survey, 79.4% of respondents plan on adding more Linux servers over the next five years, compared to only 21,3% that will get additional Microsoft servers in the same duration. 76.4% are planning to add more Linux servers in the next year, while only 41.2% of respondents are planning to add Windows servers. In addition, 43.6% expressed that they will be reducing or maintaining the number of Windows servers in their IT infrastructure over the same time span.

One of the biggest reasons why Linux is widely used in server infrastructure is because it is cost-effective. However, a lot of users nowadays have cited that technical superiority and security are almost equally as important as cost. 60.2% of respondents are planning to use Linux for more mission-critical workloads than they have in the past.

66% of respondents say that their Linux installations are greenfield or brand new deployments. A good indicator of the future performance of a platform is the greenfield market share. Although cloud adoption is low, with only 26% of users surveyed plan to move services to the cloud in the next 12 months, a staggering 70.3% says they will use Linux as their primary cloud platform.

For more details and for other survey data that may be of interest to you, visit linuxfoundation.org.