SBA

The Ascendancy of Linux

You’ve probably heard of Linux, used by techie hobbyists and for some things on the Internet, but serious businesses like yours probably use Microsoft. Linux, you will likely have been told, is unsupported, too risky, insecure, not ready for prime time, for geeks, skills are too rare or whatever.

The history of Linux is that it started as a hobby, created by a developer, Linus Torvalds, out of frustration at the cost of Unix. Unix was a serious operating system used on micro, mini, and mainframe computer systems, far superior to Microsoft Windows, but in 1991 when Linus started his project it was very expensive. As I recall I was quoted £1,200 for a single Unix PC license in 1993 - hence Linus’ desire to create a Unix clone for himself. The project caught fire, it struck a nerve with thousands of serious software developers around the world, and by 1994 was sufficiently complete to rival Unix for many purposes, and sufficiently compatible with Unix that many programs written to work on Unix could be ported to Linux unchanged. I say “Unix was” because these days Unix is a minor player outside of Apple, the biggest supercomputers in the world generally run on Linux.

Since those early days Linux has grown massively, both in capability and usage, but it’s still probably invisible in your business - you will have it but you probably don’t know that you do. Your network switches likely have Linux underneath the covers, your burglar alarm and CCTV systems are probably running Linux, your ADSL router at home is almost certainly running Linux. Linux is everywhere. Linux powers the Internet, the vast majority of Internet sites run on Linux servers, as do Android smartphones and tablets, Chromebooks, and many other devices. The world depends upon Linux, but doesn’t know it. Linux simply works, when properly set up it doesn’t require an army of IT geeks to keep it running. Linux systems running a year or more without a restart are commonplace, so why don’t you use it in your business?

There are three reasons why, historically, Linux hasn’t made the mainstream in business. The first is contractual support - Linux is free, so who’s going to support it? Companies need to know they can rely upon high quality support for the software they run, and usually this comes from the vendor. There are now many companies which provide professional, paid-for support for Linux so the support argument is historic but it lingers on.

Second is Skills - Linux is potentially more complex to implement than Microsoft technologies, it’s easier to get things wrong, it requires a better and more expensive quality of techie. The Linux development community has largely addressed this; yes Linux is more complex and sophisticated than Microsoft Windows Server, but it is also more transparent. A Systems Administrator can spend days tracking down a configuration error hidden away in Windows, whereas in Linux the issues are generally more transparent and can be fixed much more quickly.

Third and most importantly is compatibility with Windows. Microsoft has spent decades attempting to create a closed platform that mean you have to use Microsoft based software and servers to serve your Windows PCs. The Microsoft “full stack” approach - Windows Server, SQL Server, Internet Information Service (IIS) etc. has been designed to keep your IT 100% Microsoft. This has never been completely successful, developers have always found ways to bolt Linux or Unix into Microsoft environments, but Microsoft have always tried to make it difficult.

That changed with the Cloud. Seeing the way the wind was blowing, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Hosting and other Cloud providers stealing the dinner from in-house server rooms and company data-centres, Microsoft did the only thing they could and introduced their own Cloud service, Windows Azure.

Launched in 2010, and renamed in 2014 to Microsoft Azure, the Azure cloud service is Microsoft’s first venture into Big IT. Microsoft have done a great job with Azure, it offers some excellent facilities, and in addition to Windows Server it has since 2012 offered cloud servers running most varieties of Linux. You read that right - you can pay Microsoft to host and run your Linux systems, currently about 25% of cloud servers hosted on Azure are running Linux. Microsoft had no choice commercially but to recognise the demand for Linux - Microsoft may be big but Linux powers the Internet and the big Internet operators require a degree of reliability and security which Windows Server was never designed to provide.

There’s a big difference however between offering competitor products as a complementary part of your product range and actively supporting them. Microsoft was still Microsoft and it wanted you to use the full Microsoft stack. Two recent developments have changed that position.

In September last year Microsoft revealed that it was developing its own switching software - the software that connects networks together - to use in its massive Azure data centres. That software is, almost inevitably, based on Linux as the only platform able to provide the reliability and capacity needed in giant data centres. The news took the software world aback, Microsoft actively relying on Linux is akin to detente between East and West.

Earlier this month Microsoft released the source code for its new Linux-based switching software, but it also made a far more significant press release - the company has announced that it is porting one of its premium products, SQL Server, to run on Linux. Logically this makes great sense, SQL Server is an OK database but it has little presence on the Internet because the Internet is Linux, and that matters as commerce becomes increasingly focused on e-Business. SQL Server on Linux will both enable Microsoft to grab a greater share of the e-Business software market, and put SQL Server onto a high-reliability, high-availability platform offering for the first time the prospect of 24x365 operation without monthly downtime for patches and upgrades.

What the hard-core Windows Server people at Microsoft HQ think of this I have no idea, but some probably see their world being turned upside down. The offering of SQL Server on Linux will remove the need for many Windows Server installations, it abandons the full-stack model which Microsoft has relied upon for the past twenty-plus years. Microsoft has finally joined Oracle, IBM, Google, Amazon and other tech giants in implicitly acknowledging the superiority of Linux and open source.

How far Microsoft will go with this is difficult to foresee - it could port its other premium products such as Exchange, Sharepoint and Biztalk to Linux, enabling corporates who have adopted the Microsoft stack to abandon Windows Server entirely. If it does it would probably be a good move, Operating Systems have never been Microsoft’s forté, the company has always struggled with the demands of providing non-stop servers. Many of those IT managers who avoid Microsoft, relying instead on back-end software from Oracle, IBM and others, have made that choice specifically to avoid the reliability and security challenges associated with Microsoft Windows Servers.

One thing is for certain, Microsoft’s “new” CEO, Satya Nadella, has fundamentally changed the direction of the tech giant in his first two years of office. Previously he was responsible for its server operating systems so in some ways he has turned his back on his own product. He also led Microsoft into the Cloud, moving the company’s focus away from pure software sales to server and service rental.

Azure was a big bet for Microsoft, in the early years Azure lost money hand over fist as the company built the capability to compete with Google and Amazon,  but a recent strong rise in profits suggests that the strategic investment is paying back. The move to put SQL Server on to Linux is at least as radical and risky, but it could be another good bet. It will clearly lose Microsoft server operating systems sales, but it could bring in far more through increased database sales.