I want to wrap up the politics discussion started in this post and get back to the development. So here we go.
I doubt that the Linux will become more popular commercial solution than the Windows OS any time soon. Microsoft has too much inertia and resources to be easily beaten (however it is a bit helpless against political regulations in the countries outside USA, since the governments make the rules and the businesses have to follow them – but that’s the different story).
But the Linux will definitely keep on increasing its presence on the market. Especially if Microsoft keeps on embedding some suspicious random number algorithms that could have NSA backdoors (remember the recent story with the Dual_EC-DRBG in Vista SP1?). Even this suspicion is enough to push some users away from Microsoft – some organizations just can not take such risks (I’m talking about military, big financial institutions, nuclear power plants, national security and infrastructure organizations of different countries). So the governments and nationally critical organizations around the world is the first piece of market where Linux could steal get some share from the Windows.
Another one piece of market for the Linux to capture is in the countries that have lower living standards (when compared to the USA or EU). There the high-tech labor force is relatively cheap and thus the total cost of ownership for Linux is lower. That means there are more organizations where the advantages of running Linux outweigh its disadvantages (and in general organizations tend to stick to the efficient behavior in this world).
And then just imagine, what would happen if some organization has released the compelling replacement for the Windows (and bundled with it all the common enterprise software) that just costs the fraction of the Microsoft’s price for the year subscription (with the support) and is quite easy to manage and use. All these organizations that have been saying “I would’ve ditched Windows if I had some cheap and easy-to-manage replacement that can do [here goes the list of your everyday office tasks]” could consider buying such a subscription.
Well, Novell is already trying to do that by delivering SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (with the help from Microsoft). This would definitely have some positive impact on the market share captured by Linux systems.
So if you couple these arguments with the facts from this post, then it does become a bit more obvious that Windows desktops are going to lose some market share to Linux systems, does not it?
This “some” market share actually has quite some money in it. In FY06 Microsoft had revenue of $13 billions just from the Client operating segment. Even a tiny fraction of that (Linux environment is still not really good at being commercial) could open up interesting possibilities to the ISV companies that will be able to jump into this niche as it gradually expands.
One of the ways of doing that – is to use development tools, principles and resources that are capable of efficiently delivering cross-platform solutions. Obviously these technologies should be supported by some solid experience, reputation and the energy.
Who’s the primary market driver in the Linux vs. Windows competition? Microsoft.
Does it care about Linux? Yes.
What’s its favorite development technology? .NET
Can .NET work on Linux? Yes.
Does the mentioned primary market driver care about making his favorite development technology better and more popular in Linux systems? Yes.
So it’ll be.
Phew, that should do it with the politics. Back to the development world I can return.
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