The Linux Foundation is sharing the results of their latest invitation-only survey of enterprise Linux users. Their last such survey, in August 2010, revealed Linux was gaining popularity in enterprise computing. It should come as no real surprise that the latest survey shows more of the same.
A lot has happened since late 2010, and the Linux Foundation survey reflects that. In “Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users” we find that a substantial number of enterprise users “expressed concern with the rapid growth of data, and Linux is clearly the platform of choice to address it.” Less than half of respondents are planning to use Windows to handle their “Big Data” requirements.
While nearly 80% of respondents expect an increase in the number of Linux deployments in their organizations over the next five years, only 21.7% of those surveyed expect an increase in the number of Windows servers during the same time frame.
Perceived technical barriers to enterprise Linux adoption have dropped significantly, too. Only 12.2% of respondents cited technical issues as an impediment to success, down from 20.3% from the last survey. That says a lot about the overall value proposition for Linux installations.
It’s worth remembering, though, that this was an invitation-only survey. I’m sure a similar survey from Microsoft would yield results more pleasing to Redmond. Nonetheless, Linux is clearly at the vanguard of technical innovation, both for the traditional enterprise data center as well as for nascent cloud computing solutions.