Satish Mahajan, CIO of the American Automobile Association, hasn't seriously considered moving any of his organization's critical applications from Unix or Windows to Linux-until now. He has held back because he's concerned about support, security, and disaster recovery, although he has noticed a growing number of colleagues save money with the open-source operating system. But lately, Mahajan has been hearing that key enterprise vendors-Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems-are throwing their support behind the operating system in a big way, and that has him rethinking his position.

"This makes me move Linux up on my priority list," Mahajan says. Knowing major vendors are addressing some of Linux's key weaknesses increases his desire to look more closely at the operating system in hopes that the Heathrow, Fla., not-for-profit auto club can reap the cost-savings of Linux.

Cautious business-technology executives like Mahajan this week will hear more from top vendors to whet their budding appetites for open-source computing. At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Doug Elix, IBM's senior VP and group executive in charge of Global Services, will talk about the platform as a basis for future technologies such as utility and grid computing, and the vendor will introduce a Linux system that includes storage, networking, and cluster-management software. Sun chairman and CEO Scott McNealy will formally unveil the company's version of Linux and low-end Intel-based rack-mount servers that run it. And Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison will talk up recent enhancements for high-end performance, reliability, and manageability that it has made to the latest Linux version of the Oracle9i database.

A growing number of companies plan to use Linux as a platform for database management, according to a March survey by InformationWeek Research. Since Oracle began shipping Oracle9i Release 2 for Linux in June, users have downloaded 68,000 copies; in the past year, requests for the database (including its first release) and app-server software on Linux have increased 12-fold.

	Mahajan has hesitated to move AAA's critical apps to Linux. He may rethink that position as vendors increase support for the open-source system.

This week, Oracle tries to move its Linux database higher into the enterprise-computing realm. It will reveal its plans to release source code for a Linux version of its Clustered File System, which will be available for free on its developer Web site in two months. The software manages data stored in Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, Oracle's technology for distributing a single database across a cluster of servers for large-scale computing chores. "This is part of our ongoing strategy to make Linux enterprise-ready," says Robert Shimp, VP of database marketing. "We see this as an important step to accelerate the market for Linux software."

That may not be a 0-to-60 proposition. "You don't see a lot of large databases being driven off of Linux today," says Ralph Maggi, senior manager of Unix services and distributed technology for the tobacco and food company Philip Morris Cos. in New York. "What we're responsible for doing in an IT organization is to look at the most cost-effective way to run the environment while meeting all of the business criteria," he says. Linux appeals on price, and it has a lot of potential, but it's still in its infancy when it comes to running distributed systems, Maggi says.

Dell, which this week will unveil plans to resell Oracle's application server in Linux, Windows, and Solaris versions, says Linux is growing up fast. Dell recently certified its line of PowerEdge servers for Red Hat Inc.'s Linux Advanced Server running Oracle9i Release 2. In July, Dell began offering certified configurations of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters as well. "Linux is a growing, important part of business," says chairman and CEO Michael Dell-and of Dell's own business, too, "particularly in the area of high-performance clustering but also just in Unix-to-Linux conversion." The company says that 13% of the servers it ships annually are configured with Linux.

HP, which in October will begin shipping Red Hat's Linux software on its Itanium servers (it already ships Linux on IA-32 systems), expects to win converts from among IBM's and Sun's Unix customers, says Peter Blackmore, executive VP of HP's enterprise systems group. And IBM this week will reveal plans for a SWAT team of system architects, database administrators, project managers, and operating-system specialists dedicated to helping customers move from Sun Solaris to Linux on IBM eServers.

IBM's extensive Linux efforts have Microsoft concerned, as it tries to move its server operating system further into the enterprise. "IBM and Linux together are a formidable competitor to Microsoft," Paul Flessner, a Microsoft senior VP, told Wall Street analysts last month.

Mass conversion from Unix or Windows isn't happening just yet. Sales of new Linux operating-system licenses declined 5% from 2000 to 2001. Revenue from the sale of Linux systems is expected to grow from $80 million in 2001 to $280 million in 2006, according to IDC Research-a more than 300% increase, but still a small share of the total IT market. The dollar figures, though, may not represent how widespread Linux is, considering that companies can get Linux for free and install a single copy on multiple machines.