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June 13, 2008

Even today, there are still some people that need convincing that Linux and open source licensing models won't make using the technology more troublesome than its really worth. Nowhere is this more apparent than with some Wall Street analysts.

Speaking yesterday at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) conference in New York City, Linux and open source software providers stated their cases that Wall Street firms have nothing to fear about adopting open source models.

In fact, Red Hat and Novell both argued that's especially true now that specialized Real Time Linux has been developed that meets strict low-latency and messaging requirements of brokerages and trading firms.

Roger Levy, senior v.p. and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell says "there's also a strong business case for Linux as an alternative to Microsoft or even Unix derivatives."

What's more, Levy said Novell has released the alpha version of SUSE Studio toolkit for "mass customization" of Linux, adding this is "something a proprietary systems vendor would never do."

Red Hat, which in May celebrated news that the New York Stock Exchange and its international subsidiaries were adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux and dumping Sun's Solaris, also has a Real-Time Linux version. Its Red Hat Enterprise MRG uses the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol developed by financial institutions JP Morgan Chase Bank and Credit Suisse with contributions from Cisco, Red Hat, Novell and other well-known technology companies.

Chris Isaacson, CEO and vice president of BATS Trading said his server base is Novell's SUSE Linux and that he is looking at SUSE Real-Time Linux 10. "There's a strong thirst for low latency — it's about nanoseconds now. You rely very heavily on high-performance networks and uptime availability."

"This is about not just being fast but guaranteed-to-happen within a certain window," said Michael Tiemann, vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat.

But even then, market watcher TABB Group estimates that Linux adoption among the fourteen biggest investment firms this year will reach more than 72 percent of the installed operating server base vs about 60 percent less than two years ago — it's clear concerns linger about the licensing model.

The open source model requires that users return changes to the Linux community under certain circumstances, a touchy subject for companies that are battling to accelerate their business processes.

Source: Wall Street Digest.

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