Big iron vs. Linux

RECENTLY, I accompanied one of my colleagues on a trip to visit two companies competing to provide back-end services for InfoWorld. One of the companies has been doing business with InfoWorld for several years, and the other wants to win that business. I was brought along to do some quick, technical due-diligence on each. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll call our current vendor Company A and the vendor wanting our business Company B.

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Doing a thorough "deep dive" analysis of the technology at a partner company in a few hours is difficult, so it was important to look for small details that provide insight into the larger picture. At Company A, I was struck by one detail in particular: While they had made systems choices that provided stability for their environment, they had taken an expensive "big iron" approach -- a few big boxes running a proprietary operating system on a proprietary architecture. Company B was moving decidedly in the other direction -- migrating to clusters of inexpensive, Intel-based Linux servers to perform the same tasks as Company A. From a technical and business standpoint, I was already leaning toward Company B.

So why does this even matter? If Company A currently provides the same service reliably, why would I want to switch? On the surface, my leanings toward the Linux-based solution might seem like a religious, technology-driven choice more than a practical business one. But in fact the business side of the equation is more important in my thinking.

Admittedly, I consider myself a Linux fan from a technology perspective, but my gut reaction to the two companies' technology choices emanated from one key issue: cost. It was no coincidence to me that Company A (the big iron vendor) had a more expensive offering and seemed less flexible on pricing while Company B appeared to have some room to move. Without the maintenance and expense of maintaining the big iron, I thought, they could afford that flexibility.

With budgets tight at my own company, I am much less willing to underwrite my partners' expensive technology choices in my budget. Company B's move towards Linux signals to me that their long-term vision centers around offering a high-level quality of service while keeping costs in the datacenter as low as possible. This approach should increase their profit margins and helps my bottom line.

A lot has been said about how the writing is on the wall for the big iron vendors. Back in January, Oracle's Larry Ellison said, "It will be several years before the big machine dies, but inevitably the big machine will die." Not as much has been written about the viability of the companies themselves who are still firmly committed to big iron solutions. If I were the CTO of one of those companies, I would be worried that my costs of delivering service to my customers would eventually make it cost-prohibitive for them to continue with my service. I would also be concerned that each time I sent my six-figure annual maintenance check to the big iron company, my competitor would be using his cash to add more cheap capacity to his growing Linux cluster.

At this point, I am simply astounded by companies that have not seriously embraced Linux, especially small and presumably nimble ones, such as Company A, with applications that could be easily ported. With financial services companies embracing Linux, not considering Linux amounts to having your head in the IT sand. More importantly, you just might be putting your business at risk by alienating your customer base with prohibitive costs.

Change your business now or be gone later.