Week 2: Linux in the Business World

What functions does Linux and/or Unix provide in todays business world?

The presence of Linux is growing in today's business world. One of the more recent areas of growth for Linux has come with the creation of the Asterisk phone system. A company can now download a phone system and save thousands over what a traditional pbx would cost. In addition, with a traditional pbx, features tend to come in packages. If a business would like the functionality of a few extra features, they may be forced to spend thousands on the upgrade package on many features they will not user.

With a Linux based system, a company can hire a Linux developer to add the features they want, often times at a much lower price. The same is true for custom features. Every company can have the exact features they want customized to fit their needs. This is all possible because the source code is available and may be changed by anyone with the knowledge to do so.

Are there a lot of companies who use Linux?

According to Steve Ballmer CEO of Microsoft, about 60% of the world's servers.

According to the World Wide Web Consortium, the usage of Linux as a desktop environment is growing as well. While still lagging far behind Windows, some companies are choosing to make the switch. In part, I attribute this gain in momentum to computer manufacturers releasing machines that run Linux (mostly Ubuntu) natively. The price tag can run $100 less or more compared to a Windows machine. Over a large company, the cost savings can be substantial.

Who uses Linux and why?

Linux also has a large presence in the server market, especially in web servers. Most notably, Google claims to use mostly Linux servers to power their operations. Much of the reason for using Linux to run web servers is security.

Web servers, unlike many other servers, are open to the Internet with little security in place. That's the nature of a web server. However, with most common viruses being written for Windows, a Linux server will remain unaffected by such a virus.

Secondly, most effective attacks launched against a Linux server would be done from the CLI. That reduces the number of hackers who may attack a Linux machine to those who know Linux well.