IT and business continuity: the case for Linux

Choosing the operating system that an organisation uses to run its critical applications remains a tough decision, according to Sri Sridharan, vice president of UK based IT solutions services group, Stratus. Mr Sridharan says that Linux is growing in popularity compared with other operating systems and using Linux offers a route for financial services organisations to achieve high availability at a potentially lower cost. As a free operating system, the level of cost associated with Linux would be much lower than other approaches. Mr Sridharan says that this is contributing to its growing popularity from a business continuity perspective. Linux has entered the top three operating systems chart by the volume of servers sold for the first time, according to recent research by IDC. Demand for Linux-based, high availability servers is growing at a rate of 40% year-on-year, compared to a growth rate of only 15% for the overall business continuity server market.