Linux Adop­tion Trends 2012: A Sur­vey of Enter­prise End Users — A Report By The Linux Foun­da­tion in Part­nership with Yeo­man Tech­no­logy Group

von The Linux Foun­da­tion | 01.01.2012

The Linux Foun­da­tion, in part­nership with Yeo­man Tech­no­logy Group, recently con­duc­ted an invitation-​only sur­vey of 1893 enter­prise Linux users. The sur­vey pool was com­pri­sed of The Linux Foun­da­tion End User Coun­cil, as well as other com­pa­nies, orga­niza­ti­ons and govern­ment agen­cies selec­ted by The Linux Foun­da­tion and Yeoman.

This paper reports on the fin­dings of that sur­vey, with a focus on the 428 respond­ents who work for orga­niza­ti­ons with sales of more than $500 mil­lion or 500+ employees. The num­ber of respond­ents from the lar­gest enter­pri­ses in the world grew by more than 10% this year, giving us an even bet­ter pic­ture of enter­prise Linux adop­tion trends.

This year’s Enter­prise Linux sur­vey shows that affi­nity among new and vete­ran Linux users con­ti­nues to increase at the expense of Win­dows and Unix. Eighty-​four per­cent of orga­niza­ti­ons cur­rently using Linux have expan­ded its usage over the last twelve months, and con­ti­nue to rely on it as their pre­fer­red plat­form for “green­field” deploy­ments, as well as for mission-​critical applications.

Part of this growth is due to Linux’s role in two of today’s big­gest IT trends: sup­porting the incre­a­sing level of “Big Data” and achie­ving pro­duc­tivity and secu­rity gains with vir­tua­liza­tion and cloud com­pu­ting. Enter­prise Linux users show steady pro­gress on all of these fronts and a clear pre­fe­rence for Linux as the foun­da­tion for these trends.

Key fin­dings from this year’s report include:

• Even as IT spen­ding fore­casts remain soft, enter­prise users are adding more Linux. Eight out of ten respond­ents say that they have both added Linux ser­vers in the last 12 months and plan to add more in the next 12 months, with the same num­ber plan­ning to add more Linux in the next five years. Only 21.7% of respond­ents are plan­ning an increase in Win­dows ser­vers during that same period (next five years).

• More than 75% of respond­ents expres­sed con­cern about “Big Data,” and nearly 72% are choo­sing Linux to sup­port it. Most enter­pri­ses expres­sed con­cern with the rapid growth of data, and Linux is cle­arly the plat­form of choice to address it. Only 35.9% are plan­ning to use Win­dows to meet the demands of this new environment.

• Linux users see fewer issues impe­ding the ope­ra­ting system’s suc­cess, with tech­ni­cal issues cited among respond­ents drop­ping 40% over last year’s report. Tech­ni­cal issues cited by Linux users drop­ped 40%, from 20.3% in 2010 to 12.2% today. Twenty-​two per­cent fewer respond­ents cite per­cep­tion by manage­ment as an issue, and 10% fewer say there are no issues at all impe­ding the suc­cess of Linux.

• The lar­gest col­la­bo­ra­tive deve­lop­ment pro­ject gains more con­tri­bu­ti­ons from enter­prise users: This year’s sur­vey sur­faced a nearly 12-​point increase in those par­ti­ci­pa­ting in Linux Foun­da­tion activi­ties, an 8-​point increase among respond­ents who are working on code, and a 5-​point increase in those who are tes­ting and sub­mit­ting bugs.

• TCO, fea­ture set and over­all secu­rity top Linux bene­fits: More than two-​thirds of respond­ents con­sider Linux to be more secure than other ope­ra­ting systems.

The Enter­prise Linux User sur­vey is not inten­ded to be an assess­ment of the over­all pene­tra­tion of Linux in the mar­ket, nor is it desi­gned as a cross-​platform study. It’s also import­ant to note that enter­prise users who are moti­va­ted to take a sur­vey from The Linux Foun­da­tion are not anun­bia­sed lot, but the size of these orga­niza­ti­ons, their buy­ing power and tech­ni­cal pro­wess – as fil­te­red by The Linux Foun­da­tion and Yeo­man – should pro­vide import­ant gui­dance both for Linux ven­dors and deve­l­o­pers, as well as their com­pe­ti­tors […].

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