Twenty-one years after its introduction, Linux has reached unprecedented levels of deployment within enterprise environments, according to a recent study commissioned by enterprise Linux provider SUSE. Top reasons given for Linux adoption include its lower total cost of ownership, higher performance, of Linux and customers’ desire to avoid vendor lock-in. The study found that 83 per cent respondents used Linux in their server environments, and over 40 per cent were using Linux as either their primary server operating system or as one of their top server platforms. Business critical applications on Linux servers include database (69 per cent), data warehousing (62 per cent), business intelligence (62 per cent), customer relationship management or CRM (42 per cent) and enterprise resource planning or ERP (31 per cent) applications. Nearly 200 IT executives at businesses with more than 500 employees were surveyed over April and May.
