The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux, has published a report entitled “Linux Adoption Trends: A Survey of Enterprise End Users.” The report is based on a survey of 387 large enterprise organization from both the public and private sector. And it contends that Linux is poised to gain significant market share in coming years, “becoming more mission critical in the enterprise.”
The survey found that not only are more organizations deploying Linux relative to other operating systems, but that Linux is becoming the preferred platform for new deployments, something the report contends breaks with older user patterns as people move away from legacy systems and move into the cloud.
79.4% of companies responding said they are adding more Linux relative to other operative systems. And these companies list Linux’s features, its security, and its lower cost of ownership as the main factors spurring the OS’s adoption. While the latter ranked high in the reasons why people choose Linux, 58.6% said that the economic downturn had not impacted their decision to increase their use of Linux.
Enterprise Adoption of the Cloud and of Linux
The results of the survey suggest, in the words of the Linux Foundation, that “the cloud may be more hype than reality, at least with very large enterprise users.” The majority of respondents said they are not actively using cloud computing, with 40.1% saying they have no plans to do so in the coming year. 33.9% weren’t sure.
But of those who have adopted cloud computing, Linux is overwhelmingly the OS of choice, with 70.3% using Linux, compared to 18.3% using Windows.
Despite the positive perception of Linux in the enterprise, only 13.4% of respondents say that they actively contribute code. 33% say they do not participate at all in the Linux community.
