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RSS feedsThere have been a lot of dissatisfied rumblings in the desktop world of late. People have been complaining about issues ranging from the high cost of licensing to trying to keep pace with the seemingly never-ending upgrade treadmill.
As a result, some, especially in government, have taken the apparently drastic step of evaluating alternatives to the dominant player, Microsoft.
So what's going on? How serious a threat do young pretenders such as the open-source Linux operating system (OS) pose? And are we likely to see a revolution in the desktop market any time soon?
The answer, according to Clive Longbottom, services director at analyst Quocirca, is "not much" and "no", respectively.
"For the foreseeable future, people will be staying with Microsoft and it's difficult to see any big changes likely over the next three to five years," he said.
This assessment is backed up by figures from Gartner, which suggest that 97 per cent of the current installed base of PCs run different variants of Windows, while a mere 1.2 per cent are based on Linux and only 1.6 per cent are Apple Macintosh machines.
By 2007, there will be little change in the balance either, with Linux's slice of the pie rising to just 2.7 per cent and Apple Mac falling to 1.3 per cent.
Brian Gammage, vice president at Gartner Research, suggested that one of the reasons for this is that the majority of users are caught up in "legacy inertia".
Most are more concerned with investigating what they are receiving from their investment now, rather than installing something new.
But Gammage maintained that this may change. "There's a groundswell of business users that are looking for a way out of the replace-and-update cycle," he said.
"There's a perception of being locked in and people want to feel they have control and flexibility in what they do and why."
As a result, users are examining alternatives in the shape of systems such as Linux or different architectures such as thin-client or browser-based computing, although many have not moved beyond the evaluation stage.
Some customers are using Linux as a bargaining chip with Microsoft to negotiate better pricing deals.
Longbottom cites Barclays as an example. "The last thing that Microsoft wants is a lot of press saying it has lost a big financial customer to Linux," he explained.
"After backing Microsoft into a corner, the customer can say it's decided Linux isn't right for it just yet and it's keeping its options open. It's a canny strategy."
This does not imply that alternatives such as Linux and thin-client architectures do not have an active role to play, but, as Longbottom says, deployment should always be determined by the business processes they are intended to handle.
Apple's Macintosh, for example, is popular among the media in Europe because of its multimedia capabilities. Linux tends to be used in clearly delineated task-based work, such as in the warehouse, where Office-style personal productivity packages are not required.
It is also popular in specific fields such as the financial trading floor to run bespoke applications.
Thin-client computing is ideal for very defined areas where a lot of users have similar requirements and it is not necessary to store information on the desktop machine.
This architecture is based on a centralised file server that can be accessed by multiple clients with little local intelligence.
Flight Centre, a global organisation that provides travel services to cost-conscious customers, adopted just such a centralised model in 2000, when it implemented Citrix Metaframe running Windows NT4 applications, in its offices worldwide.
It has since replaced its Apple Mac desktops with Wyse Winterm 1200LE terminals, which allow users to access the Galileo reservation system, an in-house-developed accounting system, email and the internet using a browser.
Karen Janssen, IT manager at Flight Centre UK, explains the benefits of the move. "Wyse terminals cost about 30 per cent of a regular desktop PC, so the upfront savings are quite considerable," she said.
"The ease of remote maintenance and the robustness of the system also mean that we don't have to employ an IT person to support each store. Instead, it's more like one for every 70 to 80 staff members."
The time saved in installing and configuring systems, together with upfront savings, means that Flight Centre has cut the IT infrastructure costs of setting up new stores by between 50 and 60 per cent, according to Janssen.
But even if the IT department takes the decision to migrate from Microsoft, it will still face important challenges.
For thin clients, there is the cost of redeveloping or buying in new applications to sit on the server rather than desktop, as well as the effort involved in migrating key data and user settings.
With Linux, however, there is also the added burden of the lack of available desktop skills among both the IT and user community.
Additionally, despite widespread myths to the contrary, supported Linux applications are neither free nor readily available, although vendors such as Sun Microsystems do offer personal productivity packages in the shape of StarOffice.
But these do not support Windows macros, which means that sending or receiving files outside the internal environment can be problematic, as can maintaining compatibility with Windows upgrades elsewhere.
But another, perhaps more dangerous and as yet little talked-about, potential threat to Microsoft is starting to emerge from the left field.
According to Jim Murphy, a senior analyst at AMR Research, between 15 and 20 per cent of IT departments are keen to deliver their enterprise applications to users via portals, which could, over time, eat into the software giant's ability to sell more applications.
"Although most are leaving Office alone for now, it's not a great leap to think you could deliver applications such as Excel through a portal and give people access to what they need according to who they are," he explained.
Some portal vendors such as IBM are already starting to offer their own simple packages, and as Murphy explains: "If a company has 50,000 users and only 5,000 use the full version of Office, it doesn't make sense to buy it for everyone."
Gammage suggested that the biggest issue for IT user organisations these days is keeping costs down, with many seeing client computing as simply a necessary evil rather than something from which they derive clear value.
"The big issue today is cost, and Microsoft needs to start listening a bit more to what people are saying," he said.
"If Microsoft does nothing to assuage concerns, the perception and mindset around alternatives such as Linux will continue to build and gain momentum. If it does listen, they will remain niche."
See also:
Linux is becoming the operating system of choice for an increasing number of corporates, and even the mighty Microsoft is acknowledging the threat ... 12 May 2004
Vast numbers of corporate PCs will be replaced this year, but with what, exactly? 08 Jan 2004All Operating Systems
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