2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Users

December 2014 A Publication

www.linuxfoundation.org Executive Summary: Cloud Computing and Security Drive Increasing Adoption of Linux by the World’s Largest Enterprises

The results of the fourth annual survey of the Key findings from this year’s report include: world’s largest enterprise Linux users[1] confirm • Linux leads enterprise shift to cloud. that, as the software-dominated transformation Linux remains the go-to choice for the of the enterprise continues, Linux is the cloud, with 75 percent of enterprises foundation of choice for building the future. reporting that they use Linux as their Linux adoption among the world’s largest primary cloud platform. Compare enterprises continues to grow, according to the that to fewer than 24 percent using annual Enterprise End User Report produced Windows and less than two percent by The Linux Foundation in partnership with using UNIX to support the cloud. Yeoman Technology Group, and it is the primary platform for building the cloud. • Enterprises consider Linux superior in technical prowess, security, and This year’s results illustrate a positive outlook cost. In fact, 78 percent of enterprises for Linux, as the transition to enterprise feel Linux is more secure than most cloud computing increases demand for the other operating systems, an important . Companies are sticking consideration in light of increasing with and investing more in Linux in response scrutiny on the security of projects to this major change. The survey shows that that support the world’s software 87 percent of enterprises are adding more infrastructure. Linux servers this year, and three-quarters are using Linux as their primary cloud platform. • Linux continues its year-over-year growth—at the expense of other In a year when security was under a operating systems. Linux remains microscope due to multiple high-profile the platform of choice for enterprises vulnerabilities, the largest users continue to running it; more than 87 percent rate security among their top reasons for added Linux servers this year, and 82 adopting Linux. It follows only “Feature Set” percent plan to add more in the next in the list of drivers (tied at #2 with “Total year. In fact, deployment on Linux has Cost of Ownership”). In fact, a full 78 percent risen while deployment on Windows of users rate Linux more secure when continues to fall. compared to other operating systems. • Rapid growth continues to raise This survey is not intended to be an concerns about finding Linux talent. assessment of the overall penetration of Linux The concern among the world’s largest in the market, nor is it designed as a cross- enterprises about finding trained Linux platform study. Its focus is on the opinions staff remains at just above 40 percent— and plans of enterprise-class organizations and is the largest concern cited. that use Linux. We received responses from 774 individuals, 262 of whom represent ______organizations with sales of $500 million plus or 500+ employees. They provided their [1] Defined as organizations with 500 or more employees thoughts and comments on their operations, and/or revenues of $500 million or more. positioning, and plans for the platform.

2 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users Linux and Private or Public Cloud – A Natural Fit Either Way

Over the last four years, adoption of Linux Linux as well. Virtually every major public in the enterprise has grown steadily. This cloud provider features Linux as a core part year continued that trend, with more than of its solution, including , Rackspace, 87 percent of enterprises adding Linux IBM, Verizon Terremark, and . servers, and 82 percent planning to add more servers next year. The preference ’s Azure stands alone as the only will continue to grow as cloud computing major public provider running Windows moves from peripheral to core workloads as its primary platform base. Interestingly, in the enterprise technology stack. Linux is Microsoft recently acknowledged that over the natural platform for cloud computing: 20 percent of the virtual machines on Azure [2] it’s modular, performant, power efficient, are running Linux. Clearly even those who scalable, , and ubiquitous. consider their dominant platform to be Windows are demanding accommodation To date, just over half (51 percent) of large for Linux workloads. enterprises are running production systems in the cloud, and 39 percent are planning to In 2011, 70 percent of the organizations in increase their cloud computing activities in the cloud cited Linux as their primary cloud the next 12 months. With 87 percent saying platform. This year, that number climbed to that an open system is important to their 75 percent, with more than half planning on cloud strategy, it is no wonder that Linux is increasing their use of Linux in the cloud. the dominant platform for this space. Compare that to fewer than 24 percent using Windows and less than two percent using Our survey also showed that private cloud UNIX to support the cloud.

PRIMARY CLOUD At the same time, the biggest planned usage PLATFORM IN 2014 for new Linux instances is to support new or expanded application and web servers Linux 75% (88 percent), a number that has grown steadily since we first asked the question in Windows 23% 2011. This is also significant to Linux cloud Unix 2% penetration, because nearly 71 percent reported that they are currently running applications and web servers in the cloud.

is the option of choice for large enterprises. This Linux-centric cloud trend extends Sixty percent are building pure private beyond enterprises. Seventy-two percent clouds, with only 16 percent relying on a of SMBs using Linux are either currently in public cloud infrastructure and 25 percent the cloud or in the midst of adoption. going with a hybrid model. The prevalence The majority of these users have opted for of private cloud makes the number of public or hybrid models. Their platform of enterprises using Linux in the cloud even choice? A whopping 84 percent use Linux. more significant, since the operating platform ______is solely their choice.

However, even those electing to use public [2] Source: Microsoft News, “Yes, you heard that right. More or hybrid cloud models are likely relying on than 20% of Azure VMs Run on Linux.” https://twitter.com/ MSFTnews/status/524262781592539136

3 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users This steady cloud adoption, combined deployments,” and our survey results with a stable internal usage, adds up to a support that assertion. During the same noticeable market shift. In fact, research period, Windows hardware revenue firm IDC reported earlier this year that increased only 0.1 percent while UNIX while overall revenue was down revenue continued to plummet an additional (4Q13), Linux hardware revenue increased 20.2 percent.[3] 14.4 percent year-over-year, with Linux servers now representing 28.5 percent of ______

all server revenue worldwide. IDC noted [3] IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, 4Q13 that “Linux server demand continued to be (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24704714) positively impacted by cloud infrastructure

Feature Set, Security, and Cost of Ownership Are Top Drivers of Adoption

Specific drivers for Linux adoption have remained consistent for four years in a TOP DRIVERS FOR row. The top three drivers for adopting Linux continue to be its feature set (74 LINUX ADOPTION percent), security (69 percent), and lower TCO (69 percent). These are all enabled #1 Feature Set by the open source, collaborative nature of the project. At the same time, #2 Total Cost of Ownership and management’s view of Linux has remained Security (tie) consistently positive, with a steady 95-97 percent viewing the platform as equally or #4 No Vendor Lock-in more strategic to the organization every year that we have conducted the survey. #5 Internal Experience with Linux This year’s Heartbleed vulnerability put software security in the spotlight. Certainly Linux is not immune to security threats but to help support underfunded open source with more than 10,000 developers involved projects that support the world’s technology in building and testing the infrastructure. since 2005, the project has strong support. Users appear confident in Linux with their ranking of security among the top drivers LARGEST USERS RATE LINUX MORE for its adoption, and 78 percent rank Linux SECURE THAN OTHER PLATFORMS more secure than other operating systems. Security vulnerabilities are concerns for all More Secure 75% software development, both proprietary and open source, but when software is properly About the Same 17% funded and supported, users can be as Less Secure 2% confident as possible in its overall stability. The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure I Don’t Know 3% Initiative, introduced earlier this year, aims

4 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users Greenfield, Virtualization, and Mission-Critical Deployments Drive Linux Growth—At The Expense of Other Operating Systems

Regardless of whether or not a server Linux also continues to show consistent is going to be in the cloud, IT initiatives year-over-year growth in planned usage continue to rely on Linux. One of the for development environments and strongest trend lines in our surveys has been databases. Projected use of net new the growth in the use of Linux for mission- Linux servers to support development critical workloads relative to other operating environments is up seven points and systems. There has been a big uptick in this support of relational/enterprise databases number, from a healthy 60 percent in our is up 11 points since 2011. 2011 survey to 72 percent this year. Our respondents report a sharp decline in This trend is mirrored by the responses the number of net new Windows, UNIX and to our question about which platforms “other” servers deployed in the last organizations primarily use for deploying 12 months. Deployment of Windows servers and developing enterprise applications. The dropped from 56 percent to 41 percent since responses this year were 78 percent for we first asked the question in 2011; UNIX deploying and 77 percent for developing has dropped off by more than half—from enterprise apps on Linux; these numbers 24 to 11 percent—over the same period. have been steadily increasing at the expense of Windows and UNIX over the last four years. In fact, deployment on Linux has risen from 65 to 79 percent, while deployment on Microsoft has fallen from 45 to 36 percent.

LINUX DEPLOYMENTS INCREASE AT EXPENSE OF WINDOWS DEPLOYMENTS

80% Linux 79% Windows 70% 65% 60%

50% 45% 40% 36% 30% 2011 2014

5 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users The Changing Face of Virtualization

Virtualization is a mainstay of the modern network with almost every enterprise virtualizing some of its computing stack, either in-house or as part of its cloud environment.

However, the majority of early virtualization anywhere from 2-6 times as many instances projects were hypervisor-based, relying upon compared to a hypervisor, they also tend to Xen, KVM, or third party hypervisors from have faster start-up and shutdown speeds. VMware and others. All have the same core concept: emulate server hardware, creating a So why hasn’t everyone switched? First, it virtual machine for an application’s use. requires a well-planned project, especially if you already have hundreds of virtualized sessions. Containers have risen as an alternative to Second, not everything can be switched to the hypervisor model, creating instances for a container, especially non-Linux operating applications on top of a single server instance. systems. Not only are they super efficient, providing

Ultimately, most organizations will end up with a mix that’s customized for their environment. In fact, we found that: 67% vs. 16% & 49% of organizations with containers of organizations are currently already have Xen or deployed evaluating or planning on deploying KVM deployed containers this year, the largest planned usage of the three

Community development continues for all three options, ensuring enterprises will continue to have a diverse toolset for virtualization execution.

6 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users The Drive to Find Linux Talent Continues

Linux growth doesn’t come without FINDING TALENT REMAINS THE TOP CONCERN challenges, namely staffing. TOP CONCERNS RELATED TO LINUX Most concerns about Linux have plummeted over the last four years. Lack of native Finding Staff/ 41% features has dropped 34 percent—from 11 Talent percent in 2011 to seven percent this year. Fragmentation 32% Concerns about driver availability have Interoperability dropped from 40 percent in 2011 to 27 29% percent this year, and concerns related to Drivers interoperability have fallen from 39 percent 27% to 29 percent over the same time period. No Concerns 20% However, as these other issues have receded, finding qualified talent to support Legal 20% Linux has become the top concern. This is not surprising given the rise of Linux adoption as evidenced by this report. has increased nearly eight points since The push to develop talent can be seen 2011, indicating that more professionals are in the expansion of the Linux community. mastering collaborative development skills. Enrollment in Linux training programs and Professionals understand the opportunity demand for Linux certifications, such as that awaits them if armed with the right those offered by The Linux Foundation, have skills, and we anticipate enterprise users will dramatically increased over the last few find more and more Linux talent coming up years. Additionally, the number of enterprise through the ranks. users contributing code to the Linux kernel

The Bottom Line: Linux Is Driving the Future of Enterprise Computing

Linux has shown strong and consistent future for Linux. As the community works growth within large enterprises over the to foster talent, Linux vendors should last four years, bolstered in large part by continue to plan for growth in the coming the increase in cloud adoption and superior years; the survey results indicate that the feature set, security, and TCO. Linux is platform is maintaining its positive perception also uniquely suited to support the latest and adoption among the world’s largest demands of enterprise users for greenfield enterprise users, and the cloud providers deployments, mission-critical workloads, that support them. and virtualization.

The consistency of the research findings and the year-over-year improvements in perception and adoption foretell a positive

7 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users Methodology

This report was compiled by The Linux platform study. It is also important to note that Foundation in partnership with Yeoman enterprise users who are motivated to take a Technology Group, based on the results of its survey from The Linux Foundation should not fourth annual invitation-only survey of enterprise be considered unbiased. However the size of Linux users. The survey pool was comprised these organizations, their buying power and of The Linux Foundation End User Council, as technical prowess – as filtered by The Linux well as other companies, organizations, and Foundation and Yeoman – should provide government agencies selected by The Linux important guidance for Linux users, vendors, Foundation and Yeoman. and developers.

The survey is not intended to be an assessment of the overall penetration of Linux in the market, nor is it designed as a cross-

About Our Respondents

This year our survey garnered responses from CME Group, NASDAQ QMX, Goodrich, 774 participants. The analysis in this report is MetLife, AIG, and many more. focused on 262 respondents who work for organizations with sales of more than $500 By participating in Linux Foundation events million and/or 500+ employees. The majority and frequently meeting with the Technical (60 percent) identified themselves as IT/IS staff and Vendor Advisory Boards, the End User or developers and represented a wide range of Council promotes understanding of how Linux industries. Users from the US and Canada make is – and will be – used in many of the world’s up 48 percent of the respondents, 26 percent most demanding environments. are from Europe, and 11 percent are from Asia. The organized collaboration among these This survey was conducted with members of three constituents aggregates and streamlines The Linux Foundation’s End User Council, as communication of key issues facing the well as other end users identified by The Linux platform now and in the future, strengthening Foundation and Yeoman Technology Group. Linux for all.

The End User Council is a neutral forum More information on the council, including for corporate end users to voice platform how to get involved, can be found at concerns, discuss best practices on Linux www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/ deployments, and identify common technical advisorycouncils/euc. requirements that can be shared with The The Linux Foundation promotes, protects Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board and standardizes Linux by providing unified and the Vendor Advisory Council. resources and services needed for open source Companies represented throughout the years to successfully compete with closed platforms. on The Linux Foundation End User Council To learn more about The Linux Foundation include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and its other initiatives please visit us at Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, NTT, www.linuxfoundation.org Deutsche Bank, DreamWorks, ADP, McKinsey and Company, Bank of New York, NYSE,

8 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report: Fourth Annual Survey of Enterprise Linux Users The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms.

To learn more about The Linux Foundation or our other initiatives please visit us at www.linuxfoundation.org