InformationWeek

A recent survey of more than 2,000 IT professionals by online market-research firm Survey.com found that more than two-thirds of the respondents' companies intend to deploy Linux or another open-source version of Unix, such as FreeBSD, by the third quarter. And while most of these companies will probably continue using Linux largely for departmental-level tasks, some may undertake larger projects. Gartner Group, which recently completed a study of nearly 650 companies, found that 5% of them are planning to build mission-critical applications on Linux within the next 12 months. Another 13% have similar plans beyond the next year.

When The Home Depot Inc., the $38 billion home-improvement chain, asked itself the Linux support question about a year ago, the answer it came up with was to turn to Linux distributor Red Hat Inc. for help.

Home Depot is using Red Hat Linux 6.1 as a key building block for a huge in-store system that its employees will use for tasks such as receiving, ordering, and inventory management. Thin clients will download Linux from the company's Hewlett-Packard and IBM servers in each store. Applications, written in Java, will also be downloaded to the thin-client terminals from the servers.

The system eventually may be expanded to include not only the terminals on the floor, but each store's cash registers as well. Home Depot will begin to test the system in stores in May. The Atlanta company has 965 stores. In three years, says Mike Anderson, Home Depot's VP of IS, the company expects that number to grow to 1,900 stores. That means Home Depot may have to install as many as 90,000 terminals. Maintaining that many PCs and cash registers won't be the issue, Anderson says. "If I'm having a problem with a terminal, I just unplug it and ship it back," he says. When a replacement terminal is plugged in, it identifies itself to the server, downloads Linux, and boots up. "We never really have to support them," Anderson says.

But the company wanted to make sure it could get help developing Linux device drivers for key pieces of retail hardware such as credit-card readers and signature-capture pads. To ensure this, Home Depot has a high-level support arrangement with Red Hat. This includes round-the-clock support, plus a dedicated point of contact to make sure it gets speedy access to programming expertise during the development process.

Red Hat offers a range of support offerings, from free installation support-30 days of telephone support, 90 days of online support-to "incident packs" of support calls, starting at $949 for five calls, to unlimited around-the-clock support for any number of systems at prices of up to $55,000 per year. Home Depot is one of 135 companies that has signed annual support contracts with Red Hat, says Carolyn Sparano, Red Hat's director of services.

While Home Depot intends to continue its support arrangement with Red Hat once the system is deployed, it's also building up in-house Linux expertise to support its own users. The development team building the in-store system is just five people now, but Anderson estimates that some 250 members of his IT department have some familiarity with Linux.

Red Hat wasn't the only source of Linux support that Home Depot considered. The company also looked at signing a deal with IBM, Anderson says. When Home Depot started the project in early 1999, however, IBM was still putting together its support organization for Linux, according to Anderson. "We didn't want to be the first ones supported," he says.

How things have changed. IBM has made Linux a central part of its strategy, with ports to its Lotus Domino Web server, WebSphere application server, and DB2 database, as well as support for Linux on all IBM server platforms. "A few years ago, we Web-enabled everything," says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's VP of technology strategy. "Now we're making sure we Linux-enable everything. Our commitment to Linux is to make it ubiquitous."

As part of this strategy, IBM in early February made Linux a standard part of its support offerings. It has deals with four major Linux distributors-Caldera, Red Hat, Suse, and TurboLinux-to provide backup for technical support problems. It says it has built up the Linux expertise in its consulting unit, IBM Global Services, though it won't provide details. Indeed, Red Hat won't pursue the traditional systems-integration business, according to Sparano, preferring to leave that to companies such as IBM and its own 500 or so resellers, 85% of which provide systems integration, consulting, or related services.

IBM isn't the only company building its Linux expertise in preparation for what could become a tsunami of Linux projects. Other hardware vendors such as Compaq, HP, and SGI are also developing their Linux support operations. SGI, for example, gives Linux training to all new consultants in its professional-services group.