Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the marketplace cannot seem to abide a steady state, especially one that stifles innovation. Not long ago, IT users were doomed to performing superhuman programming feats just to connect one departmental system to another. Then along came the Internet, complete with standards that allowed us to begin connecting everything and everyone — in the process launching an era of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.”
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the marketplace cannot seem to abide a steady state, especially one that stifles innovation. Not long ago, IT users were doomed to performing superhuman programming feats just to connect one departmental system to another. Then along came the Internet, complete with standards that allowed us to begin connecting everything and everyone — in the process launching an era of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.”
Not content with that, the marketplace — seeing an IT industry resigned to living with a Babel of different application interfaces and competing over proprietary operating systems — discovered yet another disruptive technology in the form of Linux. And in the two-or-so years since Linux began to enter the mainstream, its momentum has accelerated beyond anyone’s dreams.
Gaining Speed
In fact, IDC estimated that Linux shipments grew in 1999 by more than 93 percent over those of the previous year. Certainly, it was growing from a relatively small base. Nevertheless, Linux was number two in unit shipments with almost a 25 percent share, behind only Windows NT and ahead of the combined shipments of AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX.
Looking to the future, IDC projects that Linux unit shipments will grow at more than 28 percent, outpacing all other operating systems and becoming the highest volume operating system sometime in the middle of the decade. This projection is impressive…
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