Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

IT managers planning for possible security threats in 2006 might be tempted to look back at some of the big security debacles of 2005 for inspiration. A major security breach at CardSystems exposed the personal data of more than 40 million credit card holders to possible fraud. Marriott tried to explain how it misplaced personal data for some of its 200,000 customers. Other major companies including Bank of America, Citigroup, and DSW Shoe Warehouse had similar woes.

Despite its success in the mid-tier, Linux has not been widely adopted on enterprise desktops - primarily because there is currently very little in the way of standards-based support for developing platform-neutral, enterprise-class GUI applications for Linux. Enterprises will not undertake the major effort required to move applications off of Windows unless they know those applications will be portable - a lesson learned the hard way in the move to Windows over the past decade.

Bob Young recently spoke at the TriLUG Linux Users Group in Raleigh, North Carolina. His talk covered several topics, from why he founded Red Hat, to his latest online publishing venture, Lulu (www.lulu.com), to the need for greater public debate about copyright and patent law. In response to a question from the audience about where he thinks Open Source Software (OSS) will dominate and where Proprietary, Closed Source software will excel, Mr. Young offered a very useful commentary.

Let's play word association. I say 'Web Hosting.' I bet 'fat margins' didn't jump into your head. More likely, you thought of some of the 'where are they nows' of the bubble, like Exodus and PSINet. Let's do another round - I say 'New York City,' and I'd wager that 'cheap rent' wasn't the first thing you thought of, either. So it may surprise you to learn that one hosting company that's been around since 1993 and that's actually making money, Logicworks (www.logicworks.net), just happens to be based in New York City.

In an all too familiar saga taking place in small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) everywhere, file/print, Web, e-mail, and application servers are multiplying at an alarming rate in response to ever-increasing demands for processing power. Initially, the decision to bolster capacity-constrained servers by adding more seems like a reasonable remedy for managing aggressive growth. However, when two-to-three additional servers grows to 10-to-20 over time while being provisioned for extra cycles to accommodate peak loads, this quick-fix solution mushrooms into a major IT problem, leading to accelerated operating costs, increasingly complex administration, and ineffective resource utilization.

One of the obvious driving factors around enterprise Linux adoption has been the significant cost savings on software and hardware. Quite simply, the hardware is cheaper and the OS is cheaper. By taking advantage of the explosion of commodity Linux boxes - and by going the Linux route to get around costly licensing issues on the software side - enterprises are finding the economics around Linux to be quite attractive.

'This is excellent news for IBM customers who want to manage their mission-critical applications and make price/performance decisions incorporating the unique features of different hardware platforms to the optimal needs of enterprise applications,' said Zev Laderman, CEO of Aduva, as Aduva announced today that its OnStage product provides single console management of all IBM eServer brands: zSeries, xSeries, and OPEN POWER architectures of pSeries, iSeries, and BladeCenter JS20.

What if your desktop applications didn't care what operating system was running on your computer? If IBM's Workplace group delivers on the vision they laid out for me in a recent demo of their Workplace Managed Client (WMC), IT departments will have exactly this degree of freedom in their desktop OS selection.

This article provides a brief introduction to the Data Center Linux (DCL) initiative sponsored by the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL). I'll describe our goals, show how we achieve those goals though our committees and working groups, and provide some examples of some DCL-driven activities and challenges.

In the IT world today, there are many reasons why Linux and other Open Source solutions can replace closed source products from Microsoft and other vendors. When it comes right down to it though, the software that's chosen in business is the software that provides the most value to the business.

With Linux now officially 'mainstream' in the enterprise, the industry pundits are starting to pay a little more attention to Linux penetration figures further down the food chain. Early stats show that we still have a ways to go before Linux penetration in SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises, or companies with 100-249 employees) and SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses that have 1-100 employees) hits the levels we're seeing in the enterprise.

Here's an understatement: security has been pretty front and center lately. When was the last time the 'S' word hasn't been somewhere on the cover of at least one of the weekly IT magazines?

My first encounter with Parasoft Insure++ and Parasoft Corporation was in the mid-'90s when I was working for a small company developing parsers and translators for languages used in semiconductor chip design. Like developers on almost any development project, we ran into a 'runaway' memory situation -typically called 'leaks,' ours was more like a 'flood' - that took quite a bit of time, effort, and frank conversations to debug by hand.

Data warehouse implementations represent one of the most challenging types of deployments for the enterprise. Several factors contribute to the challenge of deploying a successful data warehouse. Among these are large-scale and complex system configurations, sophisticated data modeling and analysis tools, and high visibility in a broad range of important business functions within the company.

In recent years, the adoption of Linux in the data center has progressed beyond infrastructure services such as e-mail and file, print, and Web serving. Today, Linux is widely used as a business application server and is moving deeper into the data center as a database and content server.

SAS (www.sas.com) is the world's largest privately held software company and a global leader in business intelligence software. SAS, founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cary, N.C., has taken a different path than many of the 'Johnny-come-lately' software vendors, starting from modest beginnings and spanning 27 years of continued revenue growth to $1.34 billion in 2003. This accomplishment is not only a testimony to the value of its products and the execution of its business, but also to its knowledge of good business practices. Ninety-six of the top 100 companies on the 2003 FORTUNE Global 500 use SAS products to analyze data and make decisions about their enterprises through data warehousing, intelligence storage, analytics, and business intelligence.

Costa Mesa, CA, based Emulex Corp., announced that future version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 will support the networking company's drivers for its host bus adapter (HBA) boards.

Former Aberdeen Group analyst Bill Claybrook shares his thoughts on how it is that just 50 sales staff at Red Hat were able to generate some 98,000 subscriptions to RH Enterprise Enterprise Linux in the quarter it just reported on.

Computing virtualization is a popular term these days, but the concept is far from new. Back in the sixties, Star Trek's Captain Kirk had the ideal virtual computer. Aboard ship, he called out his question or command and the computer responded.

Given the rise and rise of Linux in the enterprise, LWM invites one of the giants of the commercial computing world, Computer Associates, to sketch for us its 'take' on what the rest of 2003 has in store...

Many businesses are exploiting the cost-effectiveness, stability, and scalability of running applications on Linux, today's fastest-growing operating system. However, managing multiple distributed applications can be costly and difficult.

SCO alleges IBM improperly extended its licensed use of Unix Source code and related information to Linux. This is a big problem for IBM but of little importance to the general Linux community. (1200 words)

Open source offers a better option for XML, thus making the real bottom line on Microsoft's use of XML in Office 1X a simple one: follow and lose, or continue to diverge and win by offering a smarter alternative that also happens to be cheaper. (2,900 words)

Microsoft claims Windows 2003 Server is twice as fast as Linux, at least when it's used for file serving. I spoke to Jeremy Allison, head of the Samba team, who provided a few insights into the test configurations that don't leap out at the reader because they are hidden away in appendixes to the benchmark document. Allison feels this, in itself, is substantially responsible for the outcome.

At Big Four accounting-services firms like KPMG, computing is completely dominated by the Microsoft PC. Paul Murphy looks at what Linux could mean for these firms over the next two-to-five years and finds, not surprisingly, that adopting Linux would save them money. More interestingly, however, he argues that open source complements other ongoing changes and trends that could make the profession fun again. (3,400 words)

There are dozens of reasons why people have underestimated how quickly Linux has been grabbing Windows' market share. Windows starts out with a false boost and maintains its illusory market share even as it gets replaced by Linux. In 2004, don't be surprised when Linux overtakes Windows to become the main focus for developers.

KDE is delivering a better version of what GNOME's goal has apparently morphed into: becoming a great component framework that you can write to in multiple languages. Nicholas Petreley rebuffs the common GNOME battle slogans and explains why the window-manager's name needs reworking. Part 2 in a series. (2,000 words)

Murphy's October 2001 TCO analysis generated much reader comment. In this article, the first installment in a two-part series, he revisits the Linux-versus-Windows decision for the faculty of a small college or university. (3,000 words)

If Sun doesn't get a turnaround at the top, its shares could sink to the point that management would have to look for a white knight... which would destroy the most innovative company in the business. In the end, Sun is rock-solid; getting there is a short-term problem for which we offer a modest proposal (or two). (3,000 words)

With the core prototype awaiting user reaction, Murphy examines consolidation and software pricing issues raised by readers. He finds Moore's Law has been working its magic on Unix software costs while only Nixon's Law seems to have applied to Microsoft's. (2,600 words)

This article is republished from Brian Hatch and James Lee's Hacking Linux Exposed, Second Edition, published by McGraw-Hill / Osborne Media. Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or distributed without the prior written permission of McGraw-Hill. (3,400 words)

Help for managers who want to undertake their own TCO study. We look at three current real-world scenarios to learn what elements should be included in TCO calculations. (2,650 words)

Paul Murphy explains why SOAP makes getting a grip on network security a slippery ordeal, why the Aberdeen Group's report that open source is less secure than Windows is hogwash and how to bolster server-side security with Linux/Cocoon. (3,000 words)

How to assemble the Unix-side infrastructure needed to create a business-application system to compete with Microsoft-licensed software. Also, a look at reader reaction to the first installment in this series. (2,500 words)

Licensed or open-source software: which is the better choice in real business situations? Paul Murphy launches the debate with the first installment in a six-part series. In this article, Paul compares the costs, key questions, risks and managerial issues involved in implementing business apps via Apache/Cocoon to those brought about when using Microsoft-licensed software. (5,300 words)

Sidebar to 'The pros and cons of business-app implemention via open-source software (Part 1)' (1,700 words)

Welcome to the Linux Advocacy Spotlight - here to show you how Linux advocates get Linux introduced in their companies*.

Microsoft's XML extensions form the basis for the Passport single sign-on service but are fundamentally inconsistent with SGML principles. In contrast, Plan 9's factotum authentication management offers an elegant and effective open source alternative.

Have you ever received offers by mail, e-mail, or phone to the point you just wanted to scream? I have. It got to the point where no matter what I received I would set it aside for later. (Later being the next day or the next Millennium). I appreciated receiving all the CDs and products for use, demo and evaluation, however, at times.it became overwhelming. Due to this I almost missed one of the most fantastic products I have ever used; CrossTecCorp's 'NetOp Remote Access'.