IT runs on the cloud, and the cloud runs on Linux.

By -

Summary: IT is moving to the cloud. And, what powers the cloud? Linux. When even Microsoft's Azure has embraced Linux, you know things have changed.

Like it or lump it, the cloud is taking over IT. We've seen the rise of the cloud over in-house IT for years now. And, what powers the cloud? Linux.

 A recent survey by the Uptime Institute of 1,000 IT executives found that 50 percent of senior enterprise IT executives expect the majority of IT workloads to reside off-premise in cloud or colocation sites in the future. Of those surveyed, 23 percent expect the shift to happen next year, and 70 percent expect that shift to occur within the next four years.
This comes as no surprise. Much as many of us still love our physical servers and racks, it often doesn't make financial sense to run your own data center.

It's really very simple. Just compare your capital expense (CAPEX) of running your own hardware versus the operational expenses (OPEX) of using a cloud. Now, that's not to say you want to outsource everything and the kitchen sink, but most of the time and for many of your jobs you'll want to move to the cloud.

In turn, if you're going to make the best use of the cloud, you need to know Linux.
Amazon Web Services, Apache CloudStack, Rackspace, Google Cloud Platform, and OpenStack all run Linux at their hearts. The result? By 2014, Linux server application deployments had risen to 79 percent of all businesses, while Windows server app deployments had fallen to 36 percent. Linux has only gained more momentum since then.Even Microsoft understands this.

In the past year alone, Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich said, Microsoft has gone from one in four of its Azure virtual machines running Linux to nearly one in three.Think about that. Microsoft, which is switching to the cloud for its main source of revenue, is relying on Linux for a third of its cloud business.

Even now, both those who love Microsoft and those who hate it have trouble getting their minds around the fundamental shift of Microsoft from a proprietary software company to an open-source, cloud-based service business.Linux's penetration into the proprietary server room is even deeper than it first appears. For example, Docker recently announced a public beta of its Windows 10 and Mac OS X releases. So, does that mean Docker is porting its eponymous container service to Windows 10 and the Mac? Nope.

On both platforms, Docker runs within a Linux virtual machine. HyperKit on Mac OS and Hyper-V on Windows. Your interface may look like just another Mac or Windows application, but at heart your containers will still be running on Linux.


So, just as the vast majority of Android phone and Chromebook users have no clue they're running Linux, so too will IT users continue to quietly move to Linux and the cloud..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Hacker steals data of millions of Bulgarians, emails it to local media

By -
Image
  Source of the data breach appears to be the country's National Revenue Agency A mysterious hacker has stolen the personal details of millions of Bulgarians and has emailed download links to the stolen data to local news publications. The data's origin is believed to be the country's National Revenue Agency (NRA), a department of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance. In a  message posted on its website  on Monday, the NRA said it was working with the Ministry of the Interior and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) to investigate the hack. "We are currently verifying whether the data is real," said the NRA. Hours after this article's publication, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior  confirmed the hack . HACKER STOLE 110 DATABASES, LEAKED 57 According to reports from local media [ 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ], who received part of the data, the hacker said they stole the personal details of over five million Bulgarians, of the country's total ...
Read more

​Linux totally dominates supercomputers

By -
Image
It finally happened. Today, all 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux. Linux rules supercomputing. This day has been coming since 1998, when Linux first appeared on the TOP500 Supercomputer list . Today it finally happened:  All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers are running Linux . The last two non-Linux systems, a pair of Chinese IBM POWER computers running AIX, dropped off the  November 2017 TOP500 Supercomputer list . Overall, China now leads the supercomputing race with 202 computers to the US' 144. China also leads the US in aggregate performance. China's supercomputers represent 35.4 percent of the Top500's flops, while the US trails with 29.6 percent. With an anti-science regime in charge of the government, America will only continue to see its technological lead decline. When the  first Top500 supercomputer list was compiled in June 1993 , Linux was barely more than a toy. It hadn't even adopted Tux as its masc...
Read more

Microsoft tries to stem its self-made collaboration-tool confusion

By -
Image
Microsoft is using this week's Ignite conference to try to help clarify its collaboration-tool strategy. Here's how SharePoint, Teams and Yammer figure in the mix. Choice is good. But too much choice, especially when it comes to collaboration tools, has been a problem for Microsoft. This isn't news to customers, partners or Microsoft execs themselves. But at the company's Ignite IT Pro conference in Orlando this week, Microsoft execs took a step to try to clarify the company's strategy and messaging in this area. Microsoft Office 365 Marketing chief Ron Markezich kicked off the conference this week with a slide entitled "Microsoft 365 Teamwork: Where to Start a Conversation." That slide attempts to do what  Microsoft initially attempted with a 60-plus-page whitepaper : Clarify which collaboration tools customers should use when. The slide, which features SharePoint -- and its files, sites and content storage at the center -- is broken down into t...
Read more