The development and growth of the Linux operating system has brought a new question to the lips of IT managers: Why should I buy Microsoft? Five years ago, the answer would have been easy. With the dominant development tools, client operating system and client applications, Microsoft owned a certain portion of the enterprise.
But now that the Linux OS is rapidly maturing and companies are looking to shrink IT budgets, the choice is not so easy. Almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they can now find somewhere else -- without some of the baggage that comes with Microsoft purchases, like ongoing security concerns and mystifying licensing practices. Enterprises finally have a real choice, and that spells big problems for Microsoft.
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