There have been some reports in the recent press about Linux starting to lose ground to Microsoft. Not being an analyst or general believer of analyst’s statistics I rather discounted these articles altogether.

If one is prepared to look beyond the PR spin and hyperbole, it seems there is a rather different story emerging from the front…

… That was two years ago. Red Hat reported revenues of $57.5 million for the quarter ending February 28, 2005. For the same quarter this year, Red Hat revenues were $111.1 million, an increase of more than 93%. Not bad for a firm which business has lost interest in, eh? By the way, comparing the quarter ending December 31, 2004, and the same quarter two years later, in 2006, Microsoft’s revenue increased only 18 percent. I guess that company can’t find even the low-hanging stuff.

An excellent review of what is really happening. Cool…

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Nothing else needs to be said - read this: http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2007/11/open-source-in-bt.html

Want cost benefits? Well, the savings in terms of licensing are dwarfed by the cost of vendor lock-in. This can tip the balance in a business case.

Want support? The communities established around popular open source projects provide richer, quicker support than most vendors.

Want flexibility? How can you get more flexible than being able to adapt the code to your specific needs yourself? And choose the open standards that make complex technology stacks fit together?

Want reassurance that open source is ready for the enterprise? It’s already there. Linux, Apache, Firefox, MediaWiki - they’re all widespread and best of breed. That’s the start of a long list.

Pass this on - it’s going mainstream

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Here’s an interesting post from Matt Assay - blogger extrodinnaire - it seems the US public offices are starting to grok what Open Source is all about. Apart from a few stalwarts in our opposition parties it seems as though Tony B’s legacy lives on…

• 71% of all US federal respondents believe that their agency can benefit from open source (with 88% within the intelligence community holding this view because of advanced security within open source);
• 55% of all respondents have been or are involved in an open-source implementation (and 90% of those that have implemented believe they have benefited from it - talk about killer approval ratings - which may be why 29% of those who have not implemented are planning to do so in the next 12 months…)

Nice one Matt.

 It’s a very good time to be in open source.

My sentiments exactly…

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