Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.
The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create ‘best of breed’ solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts.
It was first announced in the US during 2004 but senior executives from partner companies gathered in Sydney on Wednesday to officially launch the Alliance in Asia Pacific.
At the launch, Robb Rasmussen, vice-president of EDS Global Alliances, explained that the alliance does not consider Linux to be a suitable operating system for the largest of enterprise customers because the open source operating system has issues with security, scalability and the possibility of forking.
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix — it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen.
Rasmussen said he was just as concerned about using Linux on mainframe computers.
"We are concerned about security on an open standard environment like that. We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis. Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix — it splintered into eight applications — until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there. We think Linux has the possibility of going the same route," said Rasmussen.
Additionally, he said that Linux is not significantly cheaper than alternative operating systems.
"Quite honestly, in the notion of costs, as we look at what we are structuring with our alliance partners, we are not seeing a compelling cost advantage that would lend us towards Linux — given the other things I have mentioned," said Rasmussen.
Jim Hassell, managing director of Sun Microsystems Australia, argued that Linux was no loss to the Agility Alliance because it could use Solaris 10 instead of Linux rival Red Hat.
"If you test Red Hat against Solaris 10 against whatever else… we would say that Solaris 10 beats it hands down on functionality and everything else," said Hassell.
Munir Kotadia reported from Sydney for ZDNet Australia. For more ZDNet Australia stories, click here.
Talkback
Hmm, let's see, a consortium of companies who make large sums of money selling proprietary operating systems and the hardware on which they run are opposed to a free software product that could seriously cut their profits. Why am I not surprised?
In related news, turkeys have decided not to vote for Christmas.
Linux was never designed for a large corporation to use.
Who cares what a group of overly rich corporate yes men think(?) anyway.
As far as security issues are concerned they oviously have no idea at all!
EDS is not suitable for enterprise use. EDS IS SO INCOMPETENT THAT THEY CRASHED OVER 80,000 UK GOVERNMENT COMPUTERS while doing a patch update. Here are the details:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1732672,00.asp
Now, What does EDS know?
I would never have them near our infromation technology infrastructure.
UMMM i guess google is not an enterprise then?
Linux doesn't scale?
Then I guess the article below is FUD?
http://www.pcw.co.uk/analysis/1159336
"Linux runs high availability. It's very secure, running a lot of business-critical applications especially around finance [and] insurance industries. Nine out of 10 of the world's biggest supercomputers run Linux. Any time there's been an [incident] the open source community has stepped up and fixed the problem."
How many supercomputers does Windows Server 2003 run on?
These guys are running scared. The door is slamming on their monopoly. And Dell/H-P/Xerox/Sun are has-beens on the downslope of their corporate lives...
These mentioned organisations have years of internal sales figures that proof to them that selling Microsoft solutions to their customers generates up to four times more revenue for them then anything else out there.
Thus concludes their motivation to say whatever they say.
Being a seasoned Linux and Windows user and programmer, I have no choice but to question the very merits of this research. Linux is not scalable? not secure? -- sounds nothing more than a sales pitch for the companies involved.
This only shows how far and how fast OSS and linux are progressing. There is panic in some quorters.
Nice.
Ssshhhhhh, Don't tell Dell M$ Acer etc this.... but the financial houses that run there banking, bookkeeping, pension funds, Golden Parachutes etc.
They are all running Linux Clusters, Clusters, you know the thing that M$ is hopping to be able to do by 2008.
Hmm let's see
EDS - Make lots of money off Windows, including fixing it when it goes wrong. Probably could do Linux, but wouldn't be able to charge as much as it doesn't just break down for no reason.
Microsoft - Scared to death of Linux, starting to lose customers to it
Sun - Already losing lots of customers to Linux
Dell - Been buddies with Microsoft for a long time - probably just going along with the other three
I note they don't seem to be saying Windows is suitable. Personally I'd say it's barely usable as a coaster.
Linux not suitable for enterprise use....
...for a 'keep Windows working' system.
As not even human beings can do that.
At SteelEye Technology, we have many enterprise customers who are running Linux for their critical business applications with great success. Linux is ready for the enterprise.
hahahahahaha ...this article is really funny :-)
If only i could get Solaris 10 to instal on my hardware !!!
Anyone out there can help me?
I agree, if your putting your eggs in one basket with EDS, your in trouble. They are MIcrosoft all the way. And it seems they can't really support a Windows environment very well either. Just go to the post about them crashing all thos government machines. It looks like they don't even test their deployments before putting them into production.
What a bunch of hypocrites. I work for one of these companies (I won't say which one, but it's not Sun, MS, EDS, or EMC), and I am absolutely sickened. Look at what EDS is saying out of it's _other_ face: http://www.eds.com/services/casestudies/eds_instant.aspx. Which is it, EDS? Insecure and unusable or "The new Linux environment provides a level of security and stability unavailable elsewhere. " as your other article says?
I also resent the "factual" tone of this blatantly editorial opinion piece. Not that ZD has ever been know for their journalistic objectivity, anyway.
I'm not a Linux user (use a mac), but I find this article funny. From what little I do know about Linux is it doesn't seem to have nearly the number of security problems Windows has.
This article makes it sound like neither linux nor unix are suitable for enterprise use due to the many "flavors" out there and potential security issues due to them being open source. Nothing is perfect but to put such a label or statement out is crazy.
My suggestion for you linux users, create your own "official sounding" group and issue a press release stating how windows isn't suitable for enterprise use. Given the lack of facts in this article (press release), you don't need to prove anything.
Gee, nice reporting here ZD Net, why don't you quote McDonalds authoritative opinion on Burger King's hamburgers while you are at it?
It is very irresponsible of ZD Net to fail to mention that this "Agility Alliance" is composed of competitors to the product they are disparaging. There is absolutely zero objectivity here.
EDS are they not the ones that also have been involved in the farcicle NHS computer system upgrade supposed to help Nurses Doctors ect ect ect the one that goes BSOD almost every time it is tried ..
Yea nuff said
With this kind of objective reporting, you can see how ZDNet is not on any serious reading list. They lost my attention years ago.
http://www.eds.com/services/casestudies/eds_instant.aspx
A cut from the article people are linking to in this talkback (from EDS) :
"Our Approach
* Implemented Linux server environment to ensure stability and security while keeping costs low"
Seems like there's 2 things not to like about EDS:
- their face.
This is poor journalism. This Agility Alliance was obviously hoping that because you have big names allied together telling you to believe that GNU/Linux is insecure that the corporate world will listen regardless of lack of proof or facts presented.
You can hardly blame them because the media has spend so many years dumbing down the quality of news that they figure people believe anything said with out reading and doing our own research.
There are still people who trust the government to protect the country. Haha! Especially after seeing that they would sacrifice innocent lives and choose violence over communication even in 2005! Pre-emption and defense are not the same.
Not to get too much off topic but open source represents more than just software. It is the philosophy that must survive even if Linux doesn't; the basic human right to work among a community and Self-govern is something that the wealthiest and most powerful would like to see a demise of. Capitalism and Democracy have nice dictionary definitions yet the practices of so-called Capitalists and Politicians are highly contradictory if only we read between the lines. Corruption is most effective when people are complacent. I urge everyone to wake up before we lose it all.
And for those who think this is a joke i have one more thing to say: I'm not hiding from death or the truth because even if I my life is short it still ends on my terms not the $laveMa$ter's.
Two of the biggest names on the list, Microsoft and Sun, each have their own operating systems that compete against linux, so of course they are going to make public statements against it. You sure aren't going to see Bill Gates make a public statement saying that you should use Mac OS X instead of Windows, why should this be any different? It would be extremely foolish on their behalf to say anything else other than to try and make thier product appear to be the best.
Also, while they try to make it appear that there are issues by naming them, they never expanded on _why_ these issues excisted in the first place.
Overall, I find this article to have no actual information other than the fact that Sun likes Solaris more than Red Hat Linux, and that Unix branched out into multiple independed operating system; both of these pieces of information have absolutely nothing to do with determining if linux is (or isn't) "suitable for enterprise use."
For example, the statement made by Rasmussen that "a large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying the environment." He does not continue on to say why linux would create an unsecure environment nor does it point out in any way that another product would be capable of better "securifying" said enterprise.
Lately many online periodicals have gone the way of the presidential debate: making many blanket statements without the ability to back any of them up. This reminds me of a recent article on cnet.com where the writer said that FireFox was dead because Microsoft was to release IE 7, but never said any features or benefits from the new IE, just 'IE is coming, its over for FireFox.'
I hope to see an improvement in reporting as the industry has been pretty lacking as of late.
The TRUTH at last.
I'm glad its becoming more commonly reported the free stuff is really just that. I think of software like milk - if you want good stuff you go to the store and buy it fresh. If you pick something off the street for free, well you get what you pay for when your business gets sick from the inside out later.
To anonymous consultant.
When taking your milk example to the reality level it comes out like this:
You can either get yourself some milk with a fancy wrapping on it and at least half of what you pay for will be to cover the PR spendings for that milk. But it doesn't stop there. Go home to bake a cake and you'll find that you'll have to use the less quality, yet still very expensive, butter, flower and eggs (announced to arrive the next quarter of this year) of the same vendor or else your much hyped milk will make a mess of your other ingredients and your cake will come out half baked. So you're left with choosing between half-baked, inventing a way to make a cake without eggs, or wait for the eggs to arrive (and hope that your then sour turned milk is still supported by that time).
Or you could go to the store and buy a lot less fancy looking, yet excellent quality, milk and mix it with whatever butter, flower and eggs of your personal liking and your cake will come out on top, on time, within budget, with money to spare for those little extras and your cake won't explode in your face either.
First, They Laugh At you!
Then, They Ignore you!
Then, They Fight you!
Then, YOU WIN.
Linux is the fastest growing system at these days.
9000 production servers of Oracle are Linux based.
80% web servers of the world are Linux.
This article was written by Anti-linux :-))