HP's annual sales of $2 billion linked to Linux

Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest personal computer maker, said on Tuesday it had annual sales of $2 billion linked to the Linux open computer-operating system, the fast-growing rival to Microsoft'sWindows.

"Our Linux business is a $2 billion a year business. We have the most comprehensive Linux offering in the industry," HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina said at HP's annual enterprise and storage computing event here.

Hewlett-Packard has championed the Linux system, one of the few areas of growth in the depressed information technology sector, and its business that sells, installs and runs the system has grown from virtually nothing five years ago.

"HP ships more Linux than anyone else. We don't see competitors like Dell at all because of services and support that are needed," she added. International Business Machines Corp also actively promotes Linux, developing software and services around it to challenge the dominance of Windows.

Linux, invented by the Finn Linus Torvalds in the 1990s and further developed by a community of software engineers on the Internet, is free of licensing charges, and is regarded reliable and robust because it is rooted in the Unix software architecture.
Until its recent emergence as a widely used operating system, Linux has mostly been used by large enterprises for very specific or heavy-duty computing tasks, such as firewalls and Web caching, or for replacing big racks of mainframes.

Fiorina did not disclose details, but was understood to be referring to HP's total sales of hardware, software and services that accompany Linux software. HP's total sales in its fourth fiscal quarter ending October 31 was $18 billion.

Many users prefer Linux because of the ease of adding or removing hardware for fast-growing computing tasks, such as Web servers, without worrying about spiralling software licensing costs. Fiorina acknowledged that most of her 4,000 strong audience of clients
and resellers were struggling with a stagnant economy and flat or falling information technology budgets.

"Customers are more focused on 'how do I get better return on my investment'. This is a long-lasting structural change that is not just cyclical. It will stay here also when the economy recovers again," she said.

Market research groups such IDC have estimated that the number of Linux installations has grown by some 35 percent last year, while oerall IT budgets were flat or declining.

===========================================================

Posted by N.S. Soundara Rajan, Mysore, Ph: 0821 414726

Columnist "Deccan Herald", Spoken English Teacher and Knowledge networker

...connecting people to people, and people to knowledge