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The growth of Linux is contagious and HP leads the pack in its promotion.

HP has held the No. 1 position in worldwide Linux server market share for 27 consecutive quarters in both revenue and shipments.⁽¹⁾ In 2004 alone, HP experienced a tenfold increase in its Linux support services and subscription revenues.

The fastest-growing operating system in the world, Linux continues to play a role in customer adoption of the Adaptive Enterprise, HP's real-time platform to maximize business agility and better manage resources across a network. Many IT departments find that running Linux on HP industry-standard servers is the key to reducing costs.

"Everyone is talking about Linux, about its cost savings, low total cost of ownership, innate security, and high performance,” said Eva Beck, Linux Business Manager, Enterprise Storage and Servers, for HP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

More choice

The combination of HP Linux Reference Architecture on industry-standard HP ProLiant servers offers customers more choice, breakthrough performance and functionality at a lower cost.

Enterprise blade system design, pioneered by HP for industry-standard applications, brings all compute, storage, network and power components together. This enables the HP BladeSystem to be managed as one pool of resources that deliver a variety of IT services to the business.

By the end of the year, HP expects up to 50 percent of HP BladeSystem configurations to be shipping with Linux, mostly at the expense of proprietary Sun servers.

HP Linux Reference Architecture is the industry's first middleware based on commercial and open source software. "HP's Linux Reference Architecture solution stacks take much of the guesswork out of building a software stack above the Linux operating system, which assures enterprises that they are getting a solution tested and validated to work," said Al Gillen, research director, System Software, IDC. "Enterprises also benefit by purchasing an entire solution from a single vendor, rather than having to try to assemble it themselves."

The University of Oslo has already adopted and deployed the HP Linux Reference Architectures in its data center. Founded in 1811, the University of Oslo is Norway's largest and oldest institution of higher learning.

Faced with an aging e-mail infrastructure on Sun Solaris, the University of Oslo needed to implement a new, university-wide system to serve nearly 50,000 accounts. The new e-mail system, made up of HP Serviceguard for Linux, HP ProLiant servers, HP StorageWorks disk arrays and HP support and services, handles more than one million e-mails a day and provides greater service reliability, business agility and better archiving at much lower cost.

HP Linux supercomputing is one of the brightest stars of the BMW WilliamsF1 racing team, headquartered at Grove in the UK. The team is using its Linux-based supercomputers to triple its computational capacity for designing the new BMW WilliamsF1 racing car, the FW27.

Big Tux

With five years of expertise in scaling out data center platforms, HP is responding to customer demand by supporting higher levels of scalability for Linux by offering more viable options between low and high-end, standards-based HP servers.

HP is the first major vendor to scale Linux to 64-way on a standard Linux kernel through a project code-named "Big Tux." This will help eliminate the risks associated with custom kernel implementations, such as those offered by competing firms.

Eliminating risk is also at the heart of HP's Storage solutions. HP's Disaster Tolerant Solutions for Linux provide immediate disaster recovery for storage across metropolitan-wide distances. In addition, HP is building upon its existing portfolio of storage solutions for Linux, including Cluster Extension XP for Linux and MC/Serviceguard.

Each of these solutions is designed to deliver enterprise capability to the storage environment and ensure business continuity in case of a disaster.

Strategic partnerships

HP joins forces with channel partners, independent software vendors (ISVs), and Linux resellers such as Red Hat and Novell to deliver complete Linux solutions. They are supported worldwide by more than 6,500 HP services professionals trained on Linux.

The PartnerONE Linux Elite Program, launched by HP for the EMEA region 18 months ago, is expanding. This new partner designation is intended to promote and reward value-added reselling partners that acquire HP Linux solutions expertise.

Small and medium-size business customers now have the option to work with expert Linux resellers who can recommend, implement and support HP Linux solutions.

Meet the experts

HP is rolling out a series of Linux road shows across EMEA to discuss experiences and new ways of implementing Linux as smoothly as possible.

“The HP Linux Roadshow demonstrates how Linux is used in the real world, which solutions make sense to run on Linux, and what experiences companies in the local markets are benefiting from,” said Eva Beck.

The events will illustrate how companies in the region can achieve higher profits and increase their productivity by using Linux.

"HP will stay at the forefront of designing and delivering the open source solutions customers need -- beyond just Linux -- and will continue to set the market agenda for the adoption of open source software by businesses, allowing customers to build an Adaptive Enterprise," said Martin Fink, HP's Vice President in charge of the company's Linux strategy.