Geo. H. Young and Co. Ltd. began experimenting with the Linux operating system six years ago, and the Winnipeg-based customs brokerage firm has been expanding its use of Linux ever since.
According to popular wisdom in the software market these days, it's a move that might seem to pose yet another threat to the dominance of Microsoft's Windows operating system. But in GHY's case, as with many companies with demanding computer workloads, the transition is also part of a quieter trend: a retreat from Unix.
"Linux has taken care of any need to delve into Unix any further," says Nigel Fortlage, GHY's vice-president of information technology.
Mr. Fortlage adds that GHY, which also relies on Windows, uses Unix on just one system and is reviewing whether to continue with it.
Unix is one of the oldest computer operating systems, the basic code that drives the circuitry on millions of corporate and scientific-research computers around the world. It's also seen to be one of the most reliable. Developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s at AT&T's famed Bell Laboratories, it was distributed freely to universities for educational use and licensed to several companies.
Major computer vendors eventually created their own proprietary versions of AT&T's Unix and repackaged them to run on their own hardware. IBM calls its version AIX, while Hewlett-Packard Co. created HP-UX and Sun Microsystems Inc. dubbed its adaptation Solaris.
Now those companies are showing increasing interest in Linux, which has become a credible alternative to Unix at the low end of the market and looks like it will encroach more and more on the Unix market in the next few years. Computer users, too, are seeing Linux as a viable, affordable alternative to Unix.
The Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based market research firm, forecasts that in a couple of years Linux will overtake Unix as the operating system of choice in several enterprise computing areas, including high-performance computing and database hosting.
"Linux will be replacing Unix wherever Unix currently dominates," says Bill Claybrook, an analyst at Aberdeen. Though it has made limited inroads into Unix territory so far, Linux is expected to surpass Unix by the end of 2006, Mr. Claybrook says.
Toronto-based market research firm International Data Corp. (Canada) Ltd. forecasts unit shipments of 18,200 Unix servers in Canada this year, compared with 25,400 Linux servers. That would make 2003 the first year that Canadian Linux server shipments exceed Unix server shipments.
In 2002, 19,400 Unix servers were shipped versus 15,700 Linux servers. Unix remains the bigger revenue generator, though: In the first quarter of 2003, Canadian Unix server shipments amounted to $137-million (U.S.), while revenue from Linux servers was just $19-million. By 2007, IDC forecasts shipments of 48,100 Linux servers, nearly double the forecast of 25,200 Unix servers.
So far, the rise of Linux has mainly raised the spectre of an onslaught to Windows, the dominant personal-computer operating system and growing player in the enterprise market.
Aberdeen puts the threat to Unix more strongly than most industry watchers, but the disagreement is mainly over how fast, not whether, Linux will encroach on Unix. "Unix environments are the path of least resistance for Linux to move in," says Warren Shiau, senior software analyst at IDC Canada.
That's partly because Linux and Unix are much alike, making it easy to switch. "Unix code is very similar to Linux code, and so the learning curve is very small," says Leigh Day, spokeswoman for Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. in Raleigh, N.C.
That's no accident. The core of Linux was developed in 1991 by Finnish college student Linus Torvalds, who based his design directly on the functionality and feel of Unix and made it freely available.
