Linux Journal has a nice article signed by Tom Adelstein, in which he
expresses his belief that open-source and standards compliant Linux
quickly is becoming the enabler in today's complex IT infrastructures.
Some highlights:
"...Enterprise transformation appears to exist in a continuous loop.
Every three to five years we have to deal with new jargon and new
technology.
The jargon du jour differs from that of 10 years ago, when we spoke of:
Total Quality Management,
ERP,
Business Process Re-engineering,
Activity Based Accounting,
Best Practices and IDEF.
If you do not recognize these terms, don't worry; we now have a set of
new issues on the table and organizations have started responding
accordingly...."
"As IT advances at a rapid clip, the original focus has largely been on
process automation--i.e. capturing and managing transactions. As the
amount of transactional data collected within enterprises continues to
rise, the number of places and ways it is stored has also grown
proportionately. This has led to a syndrome commonly called "application
silos", where the deployment of multiple IT systems--such as enterprise
resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), data
warehouses, customer portals and content management systems--are giving
business users incomplete and inconsistent pictures of corporate
information."
"Software surveys indicate that enterprises recognize the value
proposition of Linux in increasing revenues and containing costs. The
survey results indicate that:
* 64% of customers plan to move a portion of their OSes to Linux
* 25% plan to migrate from Windows to Linux
* 21% plan to add Linux servers
* 11% plan to replace Windows servers totally.
... enterprises see Linux as having advantages in:
* Speed of development
* Flexibility
* Skills reuse
* Speed of adjustment to changes
* Freedom
* Choice"
The full article is available at: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8365
