Linux Adoption Trends: A Survey of Enterprise End Users

Free Linux Foundation Publication – “Linux Adoption Trends: A Survey of Enterprise End Users” by The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation, in partnership with Yeoman Technology Group, recently conducted a survey of 1,948 Linux users. This invitation-only survey pool was comprised of the Linux Foundation End User Council as well as other companies, organizations and government agencies selected by The Linux Foundation and Yeoman.

This paper reports on the findings of that survey, with a focus on the 387 respondents who represent the largest enterprise companies and government agencies, identified as organizations with $500 million or more a year in revenues or greater than 500 employees. The results tell us where Linux is growing and why, as well as where opportunities exist and challenges remain.

In short, the survey found that Linux is poised for growth in the coming years; 76.4% of companies are planning to add more Linux servers in the next twelve months. In contrast, only 41.2% of respondents are planning to add Windows servers in the next year, while 43.6% say they will be decreasing or maintaining the number of Windows servers in their organizations over the same time period.

And over the next five years, 79.4% of respondents plan on adding more Linux, relative to other operating systems, compared to only 21,3% planning on adding more Microsoft servers in the same period.

Linux workloads are also changing, with 60.2% of respondents reporting that they plan to use Linux for more mission-critical workloads than they have in the past. Drivers for Linux adoption have also shifted; while conventional wisdom holds that cost was once the primary driver, this no longer seems to be the case. Technical superiority and security are the top benefits cited.

Other interesting data brought to light by this survey and summarized in the following report includes:

• Migrations to Linux from Windows are surpassing those from Unix, and 66% of users surveyed say that their Linux deployments are brand new (“greenfield”) deployments. This greenfield market share grab is a good indicator of a platform’s future performance.
• Cloud adoption is surprisingly low, with only 26% planning on moving applications/ services to the cloud in the coming 12 months. Not surprisingly, Linux dominates when moving to the cloud, with 70.3% using Linux as their primary cloud platform.
• 86.5% of respondents feel Linux continues to improve.
• The perception of Linux by management has shifted, with nearly 60% reporting that their CIO sees Linux as more strategic to the organization as compared to three years ago.
• These trends are leading companies to increasingly seek Linux IT professionals, with 38.3% of respondents citing a lack of Linux talent as one of their main concerns related to the platform.

Download the full report.