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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



Linux vendor revenue $1 billion by 2012? Or is it $49 billion+ ?

By Sean Michael Kerner on August 18, 2009 5:15 PM
tux.jpg
From the 'More Fun With Stats' files:

IDC is out with a new report (here's the abstract link), forecasting Linux revenue from 2009-2013. I don't have the full report (if you work for IDC can you help me out?) but at least one Linux vendor has already posted on some of the detailed information.

According to a post on the data, from Novell CMO John Dragoon, in 2008,  the Linux vendor community saw a 23.4 percent growth in revenue. 
"While Red Hat continues to have the largest share, Novell had a particularly good 2008 growing total Linux operating system revenue by 50.3% from 2007 to 2008 while growing overall market share over five points to 29.8 percent in 2008."
That's good for Novell (and the overall Linux market). The part of the data that I find really surprising, is the fact that Dragoon notes that according to IDC's forecast, Linux operating systems revenue will exceed $1 billion in 2012 and continue to grow to $1.2 billion in 2013.

IDC is in the habit of forecasting big numbers for Linux. Let's take a trip down memory lane shall we?

In 2007, IDC analyst Al Gillen (the same guy that wrote the current report), forecast that the Linux ecosystem would be worth $40 billion by 2010. In 2008, IDC forecast the Linux ecosystem to be worth $49 billion by 2011.

All seems just a bit confusing, doesn't it?

To be fair there is a difference in the various studies (as I understand them) in how IDC is measuring the market. In some cases, it's the total value of all those in the Linux ecosystem including hardware, while the new forecast is just operating system revenue.

Red Hat's CEO Jim Whitehurst has said that it is his goal to advance Red Hat to be the first open source vendor to hit $1 billion in revenues. Red Hat is well on its way, but Red Hat is now making an increasing amount of its revenues from JBoss middleware running on Linux.

It's important to look at Linux operating system revenues, but in my view it's a lot more important to look at the total value of the ecosystem. 

Just as Red Hat doesn't sell software bits, they sell the service and support around the bits, Linux isn't as much about the operating system (thought that's it's important) it's about all the things that Linux enables.

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2 Comments

Richard Chapman said:

It would seem that IDC is standing on the corner willing to be anybody's "Industry Report Lover" for a price. Here is what they project for Linux growth in February 2004 (http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=5334). Looks like they got Microsoft's attention with that one.

August 19, 2009 11:24 AM
nate said:

Your comparing Apples to Oranges.

How you can compare "49+ billion ecosystem" with "1+ billion dollars in support contracts"?

Your hardly being honest here.

Linux server sales for 4Q last year were around 9 billion. Linux is the most popular or second most popular OS for embedded systems. It runs 70% of the super compmuters. It's the most popular web server OS by a wide margin. Google's entire business centers around Linux-based solutions. etc etc etc.


So... assuming that Linux spending on servers alone remains level for the next 4 quarters we can expect Linux server sales around 36 billion dollars.

Soo.. ignoring everything else in the world that Linux is heavily used in if you just pick server sales from major vendors then that pretty much matches the IDC projection.

I think that IDC and all that are mostly full of shit most of the time... but you comparing those figures are _much_ worse.

August 19, 2009 9:30 PM

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