Migrating To Linux
Red Hat's forthcoming Enterprise Desktop, for example, will use lock-down features and read-only facilities of SELinux to minimize hacker attacks and may include antivirus software, said Havoc Pennington, desktop team leader at the Raleigh, N.C., company.
Red Hat also plans to integrate into its Red Hat Network portfolio full holistic threshold monitoring of desktop systems so an administrator can be notified of a problem on a desktop and fix it before it crashes, or add resources to another desktop as a specified threshold is met, Pennington said.
\
Solution providers say management, security features will help make the desktop case.
Novell plans to release a desktop this year that bundles the SUSE Enterprise Desktop with the Ximian desktop. A more secure enterprise desktop version will debut next year that is tightly integrated with the company's Red Carpet and ZenWorks management platforms.
For its part, Sun plans new agents in its next version of Enterprise Java desktop this year, allowing administrators to lock down and manage the desktop from central management platforms.
Solution provider Ideal Technology has completed several Linux desktop migrations and said there remain a few challenges on the enterprise side. "A lot of big corporations have tremendous amounts of money in Access and Visual Basic apps to run their enterprise, and that will be an interesting problem to tackle," said Douglass Hock, CEO of Ideal, Orlando, Fla.
Still, another solution provider thinks the desktop will be the killer app for Linux this year because of Microsoft's security and licensing woes. "Large corporations are planning on moving huge amounts of desktops to Linux in the next two to three years precisely because of these dynamics," said Chris Maresca, a senior partner at Olliance Consulting Group, Palo Alto, Calif. "The desktop is one of the largest cost components of any modern corporation. When you layer on top of that the cost of server-based productivity apps tied to desktops, like Exchange, and you factor in the support costs for the desktops, servers and updates/security patches, plus mandatory hardware upgrades every few years, [the migration case] becomes even more compelling."