Linux opening new windows for business

["Ashish Kotamkar" <ashish@mithi.com>]

Linux opening new windows for business
Economic Times, DECEMBER 18, 2002
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=3158
9906

Nasscom believes open source software represents a significant area of
potential business growth for Indian software companies both in domestic and
global markets.

However, open source software like Linux still has challenges to overcome in
the Indian market though it has proliferated rapidly world-wide, a Nasscom
report on the Indian Linux market observes.

The Indian IT industry’s most widely discussed market has to make it’s mark
by moving from hype to actual deployment, and as the OS matures and moves up
the evolutionary cycle, it is likely to garner larger support among IT user
segments, the apex industry body states.

The IDC, in its forecast and analysis during 2000 has also stated that Linux
was the fastest growing OS in the world and expected to become the largest
OS by ‘04. According to Nasscom’s vice president-research, Sunil Mehta the
open source movement is making strides in India with the developer community
evincing interest in the Linux platform.

Though there are no pointed statistics on the Linux market, the doors are
gradually opening to the low-cost, flexible and scaleable platform like
Linux, he said.

The cost reduction and bottomline benefits have attracted Indian corporates
to give Linux a try.

The government segment is expected to become a key implementer in open
source solutions for various e-governance projects. The penetration of Linux
among the R&D and education institutions is also pushing up its stock in the
market. From IITs to centres of learning and research like Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research and C-DAC, Linux finds many takers.

While the corporate sector is yet another segment, the low-cost advantage of
Linux is likely to go down well with the small and medium enterprise
segment. “The SME market will create a huge opportunity for Linux, where
SMEs can deploy to access web servers and mail servers.

With its strengths as an easily customisable OS, Linux could well be used to
spark off an Indian language software revolution in the country. There are
several initiatives underway to localise Linux in Indian languages. For
instance, IIT-Chennai is working on localising Linux to Malayalam and Tamil,
while IIT-Bangalore has committed resources to the IndLinux project.

Linux is still largely found at the printer-server stage rather than at the
mission-critical database server level. Besides, analysts point out that
Linux deployments are confined predominantly to the server-end with less
action at the desktop. This factor could impede Linux’s rapid-fire expansion
in the Indian market, notwithstanding the issue of OS turf wars with
established players.

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Ashish Kotamkar (ashish@mithi.com)
Mithi Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (www.mithi.com)
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