According to a latest poll conducted by Saugatuck Technology, CIOs and IT heads are fast bending towards Linux and almost half of the world's large businesses will favour Linux for their mission-critical applications by the end of 2011.

The study which surveyed more that 133 organizations from across the globe, found that by the end of the decade, many organizations will truly start to embrace Linux beyond just proof of concept (PoC) activities and rely on it for mission critical workloads.
Saugatuck predicated that the number of businesses in early or full deployment of Linux for mission-critical application workloads will surge by almost 40 per cent between 2007 and 2009 and then rocket by 80 per cent between 2009 and 2011.

"By now it should be obvious to even the most casual industry observers that Linux operating systems - and open source-based software in general - have reached critical marketplace mass," said the report.

The study also referred to the recent Linux deals and the announcements by industry heavyweights such as Oracle and Microsoft as a proof of the rising popularity of the open source operating system and the increased "legitimacy" it has gotten from major vendors for enterprise technology.

According to the research, all industry stakeholders, including hardware vendors, will need to position themselves to take advantage of this inevitable shift in attitude towards Linux.

However, the study also informed that most companies won't realize their appetite for open source until at least next year, with just 18 per cent of businesses relying on Linux for such workloads by the end of 2007.

Linux is not going to replace legacy operating systems and development environments overnight, or even by 2011. But the powerful trend of acceptance and legitimization of Linux for mission-critical environments indicates that a very large portion of the next generation will be built on Linux.