Linux clusters born in the world of academia are sprouting legs and appear ready to march right into the enterprise, despite the growing pains facing the emerging technology.
Groves is not alone in his view that 2003 could see a rise in Linux cluster adoption. Linux is making its way down from the hands of researchers into a number of large verticals, including the life sciences and oil and gas sectors. Once a company has experience with a Linux cluster that conducts technical computing tasks, they are more open to the idea of extending the technology into other parts of their datacenter, said John Humphries, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass.