Quocirca’s Straight Talking: What Europe’s CIOs really think of Linux

Only “lukewarm” to the open source OS?

If you read the marketing literature put out by many IT vendors, you will get the impression that Linux already completely dominates the operating system arena and is the only sensible option for corporate buyers who need a secure, scalable and open OS. The underlying message is that only suckers would pay substantially more for demonstrably inferior commercial alternatives.

Against this background - and without getting into the arguments for and against Linux itself - it is interesting to analyse just how much Linux has really been accepted in mainstream IT circles. To do this objectively, however, we have to understand the vested interests of the various groups providing opinions and avoid the trap simply of taking what the noisiest of them say at face value.

Consider the IT vendors, specifically the Microsoft strategic competitor community made up of the likes of IBM, Oracle and Sun. Such players are engaged in a perpetual struggle to control customer accounts and secure the greatest possible share of IT budget within them. The one thing they have in common is that they are all trying to steal marketshare from Microsoft or vice versa.

Not surprising, then, that they have chosen what they believe to be Microsoft’s equivalent of Superman’s Kryptonite – Linux - as an important weapon in their armoury. The logic is that much of Redmond’s leverage is dependent on its incumbency in the operating system layer, so attacking this is a way of undermining the entire Microsoft solution stack and value proposition.

With this kind of intense competitive motivation, this is one of the groups we need to be particularly careful about in terms of spin and bias in relation to Linux. That’s not to say that their arguments for why Linux is a good idea are necessarily flawed. It’s more a case of acknowledging the strong temptation they will naturally have to ‘big up’ the Linux position.

If you think we are being too hard on these vendors and that their main aim is to genuinely bring the benefits of open source software to the market, consider the lack of any mention of open source database management systems and application servers. This somewhat gives the game away.

Nevertheless, the one conclusion we can come to confidently is that whatever the true motivation, Linux is now broadly accepted among the IT vendor community. CA, Dell, HP and a raft of others have all embraced Linux in different ways.

But history shows that vendor acceptance of an idea does not necessarily reflect acceptance in the corporate mainstream. Remember B2B marketplaces, enterprise portals, integration backbones and so on? A sanity check by talking to corporate IT decision-makers directly about Linux is therefore required to form a reliable view.

Quocirca chose its rolling six monthly cycle of research into IT investment trends as a vehicle to perform this sanity check, which involved interviewing 400 CIOs and other senior IT managers in large organisations across Europe. The main objective was to form a view of how the IT market is going to shape up generally during 2004 but a number of questions were included at the end of each interview to explore Linux related views and plans.

Overall, 39 per cent of the respondents told us Linux will play a role in the evolution of their IT systems but the level commitment varied considerably. Five per cent said Linux is one of their strategic platforms and 15 per cent expressed an intention to use Linux on a selective basis in particular areas only. The largest group of adopters, 19 per cent, indicated opportunistic use of Linux by exception.

When you present numbers like this, there are two common reactions. The first is “I didn’t realise Linux was being taken so seriously by so many”, while the second is “That can’t be right, we know Linux is being used more widely than that. You must have interviewed the wrong people”. No doubt many readers of this article will fall into one group or the other.

The views of the second group are potentially reinforced when we disclose that Microsoft is one of the sponsors of Quocirca’s ongoing investment trends research programme. It would be a shame, though, if the findings were dismissed on this basis, as the questions we asked were clear and unambiguous and the sample was completely random with respect to the topic of Linux. Respondents were qualified purely on their level of seniority, familiarity with overall spending priorities and the size of their organisation. This actually makes the research much more valid than surveys opening with a question like: “Are you able to answer some questions on Linux?”, which introduces a much more significant risk of bias from the outset.

For those of you still reading on, there were some other interesting findings that came out of this research. The patchy commitment to Linux at senior IT management level, for example, was corroborated by responses to questions on spending plans. Less than 10 per cent of Linux adopters (4 per cent of the overall sample) said they are planning to spend significantly on Linux in 2004. This includes all aspects of Linux-related investment from recruitment and cross training to software acquisition, support and maintenance costs.

It is also against the background of only 25 per cent of adopters telling us that Linux is a significantly cheaper alternative when bought through a mainstream IT supplier. Absence of licence fees is therefore not the explanation for the relatively low level of anticipated spend.

We can conclude from these findings that senior IT managers in Europe are on the whole lukewarm about Linux. Indications are that they do not so much object to it, they just don’t see a compelling need to introduce yet another operating system into an already complex corporate IT landscape.

But it is not just the senior decision-makers that matter. Over 40 per cent of this audience told us that unofficial experimentation with Linux was ‘definitely’, ‘likely’ or ‘probably’ happening in their organisation.

Furthermore, much of this activity is taking place in organisations with no formal Linux adoption policy. IT professionals working at a tactical project level therefore clearly represent an important entry point for Linux into an organisation. Other studies suggest a good degree of open-mindedness and enthusiasm for Linux within this broader IT professional audience. This is undoubtedly the key to more tangible Linux penetration, at least in the short term.

In the meantime, it would be inaccurate to say that Linux is already broadly accepted in the European corporate IT mainstream. Continued tactical deployment will ultimately drive this acceptance but a potential impediment to wholesale near-term strategic commitment is senior management thinking of Linux simply as just another operating system.

The research referred to in this article is available in the form of a full report entitled ‘Corporate Linux Adoption in Europe’. This is available free of charge and may be requested via www.quocirca.com.