Picking the right platform
The rise of Linux means companies have to think harder about their choice of operating systems
By Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
For some time now, deciding what operating system to run enterprise applications on has been a fairly simple exercise, with most companies' choices limited to UNIX or Windows.
Recently, however, Linux has emerged as a viable platform for business applications and a growing number of companies—including some manufacturers—are taking this new option.
For instance, Grede Foundries, a $600-million manufacturer of iron and metal castings based in Milwaukee, has built its entire e-commerce infrastructure on Linux. Lisega Inc., Newport, Tenn., a supplier of pipe support systems for the power and chemical industries, is using a Linux-based ERP system, as is Meadowbrook Farms, Belleville, Ill., which supplies pork products to hotels, restaurants, and retail chains. (See page 49 for more on Meadowbrook Farms.)
These companies were considered early adopters of Linux, but others are rapidly following their lead. IDC, a Framingham, Mass.-based IT analyst firm, says Linux was the second-fastest selling server operating system in 2002, capturing 23 percent of an $18.6-billion market that year. Microsoft, which IDC notes is still far and away the market leader, netted 55 percent of sales in 2002. All versions of UNIX combined accounted for a mere 11 percent of 2002 sales, according to IDC.
Novell Netware, which at one time competed directly with Windows in the small and medium-size enterprise space, recorded 10 percent of 2002 sales. Novell also recently announced plans to purchase SuSE, a leading Linux distributor. That announcement has fueled speculation that Novell will abandon Netware and become a pure Linux shop; it also offers further evidence of Linux's growing stature in the marketplace.
Free is not necessarily better
"What we have is a market in which Linux and Windows are growing and everything else, particularly UNIX, is declining," says Al Gillen, an IDC research director. "The primary reason is that Windows and Linux are less expensive than UNIX, and they also allow companies to use hardware based on Intel architecture, which is less expensive as well."
Because Linux is open-source software, users can get it for free, which in some minds immediately makes it better than either Windows or UNIX. But Scott Lundstrom, CTO for Boston-based AMR Research, says that simply trying to avoid license fees is not a good reason to adopt Linux. "The bigger issue is total ownership cost," Lundstrom says, adding that Linux does offer advantages in that area.
"Linux is easy to deploy in a reliable manner because it is modular," Lundstrom says. "Microsoft will give you a Web browser, a Web server, an FTP server, and messaging servers all under one cover. You don't necessarily need all those on every server in your enterprise. With Linux, you can take only the components that you need."
Lundstrom and others argue that having excess modules on an enterprise server can leave a company more vulnerable to security breeches, including virus attacks—something that has become a major concern to Microsoft and its customers. "Microsoft has issued nearly 40 patches this year alone to fix security issues in its operating systems," Lundstrom says. "Even if it only takes 15 minutes to install a patch on each box, that's 10 hours per box that you're spending dealing with security issues on a box that already is up and running."
Gillen, the IDC analyst, says any system, including Linux, could be compromised if someone made that their intent, and he argues that many of Microsoft's security problems are related to its dominant position in the marketplace, which makes its systems popular targets for hackers.
Chris Colyer, Microsoft's global industry manager for manufacturing, says the latest version of Microsoft's server operating system, Windows Server 2003, allows users to turn off features they are not using. He also says the successor to Windows Server 2003, currently codenamed Longhorn, "will extend security technologies that protect against malicious exploits, as well as introduce new security improvements at the architecture level that developers can use to extend security across applications and services."
Linux in manufacturing
These changes could help stave off any threat Linux poses to Microsoft's dominance of the server market, but most industry experts believe it will be a while before Linux becomes a real challenger to Microsoft, particularly in areas that are most critical to manufacturers, such as supporting ERP and shop-floor applications.
"Linux is doing well in areas where companies see the operating system as more of a commodity," AMR's Lundstrom says. "Manufacturers are showing a fair amount of interest in Linux for managing Web servers and database servers. They also are starting to show interest in Linux as an ERP platform, but it has not migrated onto the shop floor at all. In areas such as process control, Microsoft has a distinct advantage that probably will persist for the foreseeable future."
As recent sales figures show, Linux is more of a short-term threat to UNIX for a variety of reasons. First, Linux was developed from the UNIX kernel, which makes it a variant of UNIX. That means the transition to Linux should be easy for any company that has experience with UNIX.
Second, most of the applications that have been developed for Linux are aimed at larger companies, which are more likely to be running on UNIX. This certainly is true in the manufacturing sector, where the big three ERP players—SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle—are offering versions of their product suites for Linux while most of the vendors that target small- and medium-size manufacturers remain committed to the Microsoft platform. Two exceptions are Abas and CSB-System International, two German companies that sell Linux-based ERP packages for small and medium-size manufacturers. Both Abas and CSB established North American sales offices within the past 18 months.
The major server hardware suppliers—IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems—have been the primary distributors of UNIX, with each developing their own version of the operating system specifically for their boxes. Now each of these players offers Linux-based machines as well.
Of the three, IBM appears to have made the strongest commitment to Linux, making it available on its entire product line, including its mainframes and its midrange iSeries server, which historically has only run its own proprietary operating system. HP's Linux strategy is centered on its Proliant servers, which are powered by the Itanium chip that HP co-developed with Intel.
An economic decision
Both IBM and HP still sell UNIX- and Windows-based servers, but they also say Linux sales are accelerating. Allan Jollans, IBM's Linux strategy manager, says Linux is gaining momentum because word of its economic benefits is filtering into executive suites. "A couple of years ago, few CEOs, or even CIOs, had heard about Linux," he says. "Now it's getting a lot of attention because people understand that it can give them UNIX-type, industrial-strength performance without expensive proprietary hardware."
The emergence of Linux has probably been most disruptive to Sun, which had built its server business around its UNIX platform. Sun is unlikely to start selling Windows-based servers anytime soon, but it is now offering both Linux and its own Solaris version of UNIX on machines powered by chips that typically go into PCs.
Paul Milo, Sun's ERP segment manager, says Sun will give customers the operating system that best fits their needs, but he cautions, "There are issues with the Linux model," particularly when it comes to support.
Support was more of an issue in Linux' s early days when the only way to obtain it was downloading it from a Web site and installing it yourself. These days companies can get Linux from a distributor like SuSE or Red Hat, or they can purchase a server with a pre-loaded version of Linux from one of the major hardware vendors. In addition to the traditional UNIX suppliers, Dell sells Linux-based servers.
While the Linux software is still free, all of the distributors—including the hardware vendors—offer service & support contracts. But Len Janke, director of business engineering for Grede Foundries, says Linux doesn't require much support.
"We spend much more time maintaining our UNIX and NT systems than we do Linux," Janke says. "We bought a service agreement from SuSE, but I don't think we have called them once in the past two years." Janke admits that Grede's first deployment of Linux, on a domain name server, was a low-risk experiment, since that server's job was supporting a Web site that displayed electronic versions of product brochures.
As Linux proved its reliability, however, its use was expanded. Today, Grede runs 13 Linux-based applications on one side of a dual-processor IBM S390 mainframe. These applications comprise Grede's entire e-commerce infrastructure, which includes an employee self-service Web site, as well as a site through which customers can place and track orders, and a third site that lets Grede track its own products as they move through its network of subcontractors to its customers.
The Linux side of the mainframe also houses a program that monitors Grede's entire IT network. The programs being monitored include a series of legacy systems that handle order management, production planning, and other business functions, as well as a PeopleSoft human resources application, and a plant maintenance package from MRO Software.
The legacy business applications occupy the second side of the IBM mainframe, while the HR and plant maintenance packages reside on separate servers that run IBM's AIX version of UNIX and Windows NT, respectively.
Lisega adopted the Linux-based ERP suite from Abas because its German parent company was using the system and declared it a corporate standard. John Kupski, Lisega's IT coordinator, says the move produced substantial cost savings without sacrificing operational performance.
"We were running the HP U-X version of UNIX," Kupski recalls. "When it was time to upgrade our hardware, we moved to a Dell server running the Red Hat version of Linux." Kupski says the transition from UNIX to Linux was smooth, "but if you were moving to Linux from Windows, there would be a learning curve."
Still, Kupski advises anyone considering new enterprise applications to investigate all three operating systems—Windows, Linux, and UNIX—"and pick the one that is best for your organization and its goals. People who are tied to any one philosophy are making a mistake."
Mike Balma, business strategist for HP's Linux division, makes an even stronger statement, "The bottom line is Linux is not going away," he declares. As an IT executive, if you are not at least investigating Linux, you are not doing yourself or company's shareholders justice."
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