Growing the pie
August 18th, 2009 by John Dragoon
Every year about this time I await the very comprehensive market analysis and forecast IDC does on the worldwide Linux operating environment. While 2009 has been a tough year for technology vendors in general, those of us in the Linux space continue to believe strongly in the value proposition and potential of this still relatively young operating system. The question is are we blinded by our passion or do the facts speak for a Linux future as bright as its past and present?
Well, IDC just released their 2009-2013 forecast (and review) of the worldwide Linux market and there’s good news all around. Considering that Linux revenue started at $0 a decade ago, IDC’s projections showing Linux operating systems revenue exceeding $1 billion in 2012 and continuing to grow to $1.2 billion in 2013 is big news indeed. In 2008, the last full year of data, the Linux vendor community saw a 23.4% growth in revenue, well north of the single digit increase in operating system revenue at large. And while Red Hat continues to have the largest share, Novell had a particularly good 2008 growing total Linux operating system revenue by 50.3% from 2007 to 2008 while growing overall market share over five points to 29.8% in 2008.
On the server side, Linux is increasingly the choice for mission critical applications. The growth of virtualization and the importance of interoperability were both cited by IDC as critical adoption drivers for Linux. We agree. These factors when combined with Linux’ clear and compelling economic value proposition suggest Linux will not only weather the current economic crisis but will continue to grow at above average growth rates for years to come.
IDC rightly points out that Linux on the client side “remains the great hope…” We agree that IT professionals are becoming increasingly comfortable with client side Linux. We further agree that the emergence of netbooks as low cost form factors and Intel’s exciting Moblin platform (of which Novell is a key contributor and partner) provide opportunities for Linux to grow on the client side where there is ample green field opportunity and market redefinition.
All in all, the momentum for Linux continues.
John