Linux adoptions are to grow in the next
three to five years at nearly triple the rate of Windows,
according to Oracle.

In an interview at the LinuxWorld conference in Sydney, the
database company suggested Linux deployments had grown beyond an
adoption phase, and were now becoming ubiquitous in small and
large businesses alike.

Monica Kumar, director of Oracle’s Linux Program Office,
pointed to the open source operating system becoming mainstream
as “… businesses are looking to Linux as a way to save
money,” and quotes a projected growth rate of 11.7 percent per
year over the next five years. The software heavyweight claims
analysts project Windows’ growth over the same period as being
3.6 percent per year.

“We don’t come across many big companies these days that don’t
have a Linux strategy, which is in contrast to the market three
years ago,” says Kumar.

It’s not just enterprise customers leading the charge, though.
“Small [companies] are now betting their businesses on
Linux”.

Kumar points to market awareness and a growing number of
Linux-savvy developers in developing countries to drive the
uptake, and suggests open standards are a huge driver.

“Linux is mainstream. There are a lot of questions that we
used to get maybe two years ago where people used to say, ‘is
Linux really ready for the enterprise. Can you give me some proof
points? Who’s deploying it? […] I need to prove the ROI or
TCO to my CIO about Linux’. It’s been two years and I don’t get
that question anymore.”

She also goes on to point out a shift in adoption drivers:
from the developers at the front line to the CIOs.

“We’re now seeing adoption driven from the CIOs, instead of
from the individual developers, and it’s allowing Linux to pick
up momentum.”

The company has recently released a free version of its
flagship database product in an attempt to woo developers towards
Oracle technologies.