Linux vs Windows - Conquering a Windows Based World

The Italian Ministry of Economics has selected Redhat Linux to power its mission-critical applications because of its reliability and performance. They are running accounting packages for generating electronic and print payslips for more than 1.5 million state employees. Redhat is also being used to power their production Oracle and Mysql databases.

“It is using the system as the main platform for many of its critical applications, including its “Service Personale Tesoro” (SPT) application, which runs on one of the most popular Italian government websites.“

Their goal is to provide citizens with important public information via the internet.

The New York Stock Exchange continues to heavily invest in Linux blade servers as it builds the NYSE Hybrid Market trading system.

Reason for choosing Linux on x686 hardware.

• Cost
• Flexibility
• Technology Independence

Covered at the NYTimes

“Rubinow said that Linux is mature enough to meet his needs. The open-source operating system may not have all the polish of Unix technologies with 20-plus years of history behind them, “but it’s polished enough for us,” he said.”

That pretty much sums up what I am finding that a lot of people are also saying about Linux and Open Source software in general.  Its not perfectly polished, but its good enough to get the job done.

Hospital software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is curing IT bloat by moving 50 of its 70 most popular health care applications to Linux instead of mainframes, thereby reducing cost for hospitals and medical offices. At first it was challenge convincing hospital executives said Simpson. “It took them time to understand that open source is safe, that open source has support”.

“Red Hat estimated that health care facilities that have switched have been able to save as much as 60% on IT costs compared with what they were spending before.”

Perhaps one of the more interesting quotes from the article also came from Simpson.

“Our hospitals aren’t ready yet for Linux on the desktop, but it’s coming” in another three or four years, he said. “If you look at the total costs of hospitals and the pressure on hospitals to continue to lower their costs, it’s coming.”

I have seen this scenario happen time and time again. Its not quite mainstream yet, but will be soon.