For Many Web Hosting Shops, All Roads Lead To Linux

The cost-effectiveness of Linux when compared with other platforms such as Windows and Solaris is reason enough to develop on the open-source platform, but flexibility also plays a role, said solution providers.

Strapped for cash, four college students borrowed some money in 1997 to start DreamHost. The money went toward a server running Linux.

Five years and 45,000 Web hosting clients later, the company remains a Linux shop. "If our money can go twice as far and we can buy twice as many servers vs. going with Microsoft technology, why would we switch?," said Dallas Bethune, co-founder of DreamHost, Los Angeles.

Other platforms such as Solaris lock IT shops into Sun Microsystems hardware, which costs more than Intel-based servers running Linux, not to mention that Linux software is free, solution providers said.

"Linux allows us to go with a myriad of manufacturers that give us a lot more flexibility in terms of which platforms we choose for which applications," said Jim Collins, COO of managed hosting provider Affinity Internet, El Segundo, Calif. The company can offer less expensive hosting services by running Linux on white-box servers, which is key, since the company mainly serves the SMB market. Although Affinity Internet also hosts on Solaris and Microsoft platforms, 70 percent of its revenue comes from Linux hosting, and customers are the ones fueling this trend, said Collins.

Although Linux was originally driven by a grass-roots effort, the open-source platform now has backing from some major corporate players,among them, IBM and Sun. The latter, in fact, introduced a Linux box last month.

Given Linux's newfound foothold, companies that once shied away from the OS are now asking for it, said solution providers.

"Linux has proven itself to a broader and more conservative marketplace," said John Zdanowski, co-founder and vice president of strategy at Affinity Internet. "People expected there to be problems with the open-source solution that just haven't come to fruition."

A trend called virtual hosting is also boosting the popularity of Linux. SWsoft, for example, developed a Linux solution that lets solution providers run as many as 50 copies of Linux on one Intel box. In turn, the San Francisco-based service provider is now able to offer dedicated-style hosting in a virtual, shared and less expensive hosting environment.

As of August, 40 hosting providers were using SWsoft's hosting operations management product, called HSP Complete.

SWsoft partner Penguix is hosting about a dozen small-business Web sites using HSP Complete. "Linux is an assemblage of small programs, and you can slice the environment to a finer degree," said Todd Robinson, CEO of Penguix, Tampa, Fla. "Linux allows you to do virtualization in a way that's not possible in Windows."

Companies such as Penguix are steadily bringing Linux into more business environments, and it's mainly programmers that are making that happen. Case in point: Whenever systems administrators or engineers are given a Windows-based PC at Affinity, they reformat the hard drive to run Linux, said Zdanowski.

"People are becoming more familiar with [Linux because it's out there and it's free, and when you become more familiar and comfortable with a platform, it becomes the one you choose to develop on," said Robinson.

The fact that Linux is free and open has led to a tremendous pool of resources for hosting companies to tap. If DreamHost encounters a problem, the company typically gets it resolved within 20 minutes by reaching out to Linux users on discussion boards. "One of the major differences between Linux and other platforms is that the people who are creating it are also the ones using it, not selling it," said Bethune.