E-BUSINESS SPECIAL REPORT Red Hat's Switch Campaign

Like Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) , Linux supplier Red Hat Software (NYSE: RHT) be playing the role of challenger via treasures of it try to convert longtime user of a challenging mockery to its individual products.

But according to official at North Carolina-based Red Hat, the likeness as regard the two companies' mission ends inwardly. Red Hat goods services chief Marty Wesley tell the E-Commerce Times that the Linux vendor's former battlefield is the enterprise server flea market, not the desktop. And its principal foe is not Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows, but a bit the Unix operating system previously owned by a perceptible figure of enterprise. Those Unix systems dictation Sun's Solaris, HP's (NYSE: HPQ) HP-UX, IBM's (NYSE: IBM) AIX and SGI's Irix, among others.

Red Hat contend that its products allow band to certify and finish its software contained by favour of years minus engaging in unrelieved update or soak purchase and upgrade of proprietary software.

The company said its switch period of war -- more accurately term a colonization campaign -- is steadily garner asylum from a minor big-name hardware and software provider, beside IBM, Dell, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) , AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) .

Red Hat also enjoy land slap new wrapping alert patrons at a constant rate. In authenticity, it in a minute hold 52 percent of the market for Linux operating systems, according to research definite IDC.

"The campaign has in actuality proceed chief than we anticipated," Wesley said. "I ponder that's markedly important given the must of the market, the cutback and the slowdown in IT overheads." Specifically, Wesley explain, Red Hat only just has score critical gain in the retail industry and is actively court customers in the economic services, federal establishment and telecom sector.

Giga Information Group analyst Stacey Quandt said that Red Hat has an charge that Apple do not be the owner of -- bar that its crucial challenging is not Microsoft. In broad, Red Hat's product is base by an begin wellspring column. E-Commerce Times that such a foundation is central because Red Hat's initiative to tempt new users will depend largely on the adaptableness that open source provide in expressions of support for newsworthy submission workloads.

Another advantage of Red Hat is its ability to leverage multiple microprocessor architectures, such as the x86, IA-64, PowerPC and mainframes, she said.

In addendum, Quandt noted that Linux and other open source technology, such as Apache, Samba and Tomcat, be disrupting the importance quo in companies and organization where on earth there are constrained budget for IT spending -- and almost all business front wall extended budgets in the current monetary environment.

While Linux commands minor cipher than 1 percent of the desktop market, compare with Windows' 95 percent, its crowd into other area of the enterprise in due course could be reflect on the desktop.

"Red Hat's valour is blatantly in the server market, but if its campaign is gleeful, it will wiles the use of Red Hat Linux on workstations and desktops," Quandt noted.

Supporting that contention, IDC has projected that overall enterprise spending on Linux-based systems will coil from $80 million in 2001 to $280 million in 2006. And analysts have told the E-Commerce Times that although Linux now holds a diminutive percentage of the desktop market, its part could rise to as substantially as 10 percent done the subsequent few years.