Business has been booming for Linux in this era of continued IT budget constraints, and the outlook remains rosy, at least according a report just released by The Linux Foundation. In the last year, 84 percent of enterprise users surveyed by the foundation said their organizations increased their use of Linux, and in the coming year, 82 percent expect to continue the growth, reports Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet.

The snowballing expansion of data is one factor in the increasing interest in Linux, and cloud computing appears to be another big driver. The survey, "Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users," found that two-thirds of users taking advantage of cloud-based applications are using Linux as their main operating system. This is a dramatic increase over the 4.7 percent who reported that last year.

The biggest reason for moving to Linux for cloud computing and servers is total cost of ownership, followed closely by features and security.  More than three-quarters of the survey participants believe Linux is more secure than other platforms.

Although the survey obviously leaned toward those who already appreciate the open source platform, it reflected a wide range of very large enterprises, including Goldman Sachs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, NTT, DreamWorks, Goodrich, MetLife and Morgan Stanley, to name a few.

"These companies aren't using Linux for trivial jobs either," Vaughan-Nichols notes. "69.1% [of] these companies plan in the next twelve months to use Linux for more mission-critical workloads. In other words, big companies doing big work are leading the way to Linux."

For more:
- see Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols's article at ZDNet

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