Martin Taylor recently marked his one-year anniversary as Microsoft Corp.'s chief Linux strategist. Taylor, whose official title is general manager of platform strategy, recently spoke with Computerworld about his first year in that job. This is Part 2 of the interview. Part 1 is available online. For what server workloads have you noted the most activity around Linux? The biggest uptake on Linux has been in the Web server workload. We also have seen on the [application platform] workload the Unix scenario. Meta [Group] recently did a survey of 24 IT professionals and business decision-makers who moved from SAP or PeopleSoft on Unix to Windows. They found about [a] 50% in aggregate decrease in number of servers needed, 50% savings in administrative cost and cost of ownership, and about 25% increase in their abilities -- reliability, scalability, availability. One of the reasons we asked Meta to go talk [to users] before we go spin up a lot of activities in the coming year [is] I need something to really help me understand. ... "What's our value prop there? Do people really see benefit? How do we win over these Unix people that don't want to do Windows? Are there real hard-core cost savings?"