I’ve seen at least two stories commenting on a certain recent Info-Tech study now, and thought I’d mutter about it for a few moments.
In a nutshell, Info-Tech surveyed mid-size business, and found a gaping void where they expected to find interest in Linux. Some 48% said they had no interest at all in Linux, and 15% said they weren’t sure if they would evaluate it in the future. The Forbes article is here.
For starters, there is a little bit of spin at work here. Anyone with actual acquaintances in the world of business is not surprised that 48% have "no interest" — shoot, half the people I meet still don’t really know what Linux is, so no real surprise here). Also, unless the write-up is worded very badly, I know enough about statistics to know that the 48% and 15% are not cumulative — they are two different questions. That should mean (I don’t have access to the complete survey) that 52% reported at least some interest in Linux, and that 85% are sure about whether or not they will evaluate it in the future; of course, some may be sure that they won’t, but that means that everyone else (in this case we can take the leftover of the two percentages, which logically should mean 37%) does plan to evaluate it in the future.
Considering that we are talking about an operating system built by cooperation over 15 years, mainly by volunteers and subsequently given away for free, those numbers are pretty good.
Of course, the story that everyone really wants to report is the underdog making good; so when there’s still no landslide of shift toward Linux, this is reported as a failure for Linux in the mid-size business world. I don’t really think so — rather, this is just an indication that the adoption of Linux is slower than some of us would like to think it should be (myself included, but the truth hurts).
The flipside, again, is that the very fact that a lack of results for Linux is news, the very fact that this is a "surprise" to the people at Info-Tech, indicates something very telling; while Linux is being adopted slower than we would like, it’s also being adopted a lot faster than some would like. If it weren’t, this would not be news, and no one would be surprised. We don’t see news stories that say, Businesses still fail to use OS/2, for example. (Okay that’s a little old, but anyways….)
So is Linux gaining any ground? Let’s take just one company, Red Hat, as an example.
The Raleigh, N.C., company’s total revenue for fiscal year 2005 jumped to $196.5 million, an increase of 58 percent from 2004. For the fourth quarter of 2005, the revenue was $57.5 million. This was a year-over-year increase of 56 percent and a third to fourth quarter leap of 13 percent.
[Link]
$196.5 million of revenue in year, eh? Only a 58% increase. Sounds like they’re dying over there</sarcasm>. Sure, it is small potatoes compared to Microsoft, or even Apple… but at the same time, thats not an insignificant number. And that is only one (the largest, admittedly) Linux vendor.
My take? Of course Linux is growing. Just because it isn’t a tidal wave of instant world domination doesn’t mean it isn’t growing.
Sheesh.
Continue reading ‘Study shows lack of interest in Linux’
