Channel High-Fives HP's SUSE Linux Deal
"This HP deal is huge for Linux," said Tim Shea, co-owner of Alpha NetSolutions, a Worcester, Mass.-based solution provider. "This saves our clients that want to deploy Linux a lot of cost and labor." Many of these customers currently have the added expense of getting the open-source OS installed and imaged on its desktops, Shea said. The HP deal,as with similar Linux-related pacts that IBM has inked,reduces the cost of deploying Linux, he said.
Frank Basanta, director of technology at Systems Solutions, a New York-based systems integrator, said the HP deal adds to Linux's desktop momentum. Systems Solutions, for example, is currently working with one of its large customers to roll out SUSE Linux on IBM desktops. "The cost and security issues are driving Linux's adoption," he said.
Solution providers said a big plus of running Linux on desktop systems is it avoids the high cost of using Microsoft Windows and Office,something that has come to be referred to by some VARs as the "Windows tax." With desktop systems now costing about $500, Windows and Office comprise an increasingly larger slice of the total cost of a system, Shea said. A Linux desktop solution could save a customer as much as two-thirds of the cost compared to a Microsoft Windows/Office solution.
Another obstacle to wider Linux adoption on the desktop is the functionality of Office equivalents such as OpenOffice and Sun Microsystems' StarOffice, Shea said. Most small businesses don't need the advanced functionality of Microsoft Office, and only as few as 10 percent of large corporations need it, but most users are wary of going to an alternative, he said.
HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina, for her part, downplayed the importance of Linux on the desktop during an interview with CRN. "The reason you're gonna see certain things like Linux PCs occur in a market like China is because the cost points are so different, the price points are so different and the customers' requirements are very different," she said. "Linux-based PCs ... are going to be an application for developing markets with very stringent price-point requirements, and they're going to stay there for some time. It's not to say that Linux will never come to the desktop ... but we have a long way to go before Linux ... meets the requirements of a developed market like the United States."