The days of "one size fits all" are gone. No one (apart from maybe Microsoft) is actually propagating the one-OS idea anymore. IS people are more concerned about using the right tools for the right job. Their biggest concern is inter-operation between various platforms, and OSs like Solaris (on Sun machines), OS/400 (on IBM AS/400 systems), and others recognize and cater to this. As does Linux, which happily cooperates with just about any OS under the Sun, including Windows.

Now you know that the phrase "switching to Linux" is not really appropriate. A company should start using Linux in conjunction with other operating systems.

Linux has a lot to offer to business users—stability, completeness, and support. These are three major issues for any corporation that needs to depend on its computers.

Linux, like other Unixes, offers this because of its mature background—Unix has been around for almost three decades and has matured in this time. It’s still the OS of choice for anyone who values uptimes of months and years rather than days or (hopefully) weeks.

Rapid cost escalation because of incompleteness of an OS is another factor—Linux is so complete that in many cases you just don’t need to buy or acquire anything else to deploy it. Other OSs (even many commercial Unixes) tend to give you the barebones, then make you pay heavily for required add-ons and options.

Finally, when problems crop up, they usually do so at seriously inconvenient times. At that time, it’s important to be able to ask for help and get it—fast. No commercial company on earth can even come close to rivaling the kind of support you can get for Linux today—mainly because the support is largely Internet based, and knows no working hours. You can be in direct touch with the developers rather than fight your way through voice-menu layers, on-hold music, and "working hours". Added to that, the source code for just about everything under Linux (including the OS itself) is available in case you want to fix things yourself. And with the bonus of more and more Linux-oriented commercial companies coming into the picture, it all adds up very nicely.

So why would a company want to deploy Linux? Simple, because it’s stable, complete and extremely well supported.

What kind of organizations are using Linux in India?

The spread of companies using Linux today has now become too wide to classify. We have seen multi-national electronics giants, huge public sector corporations, software firms, massive architectural firms, donor agencies, chartered accountants, textile designers, training institutes, grocery stores, machinery manufacturers, and mail-order companies deploy Linux with great success.