With Linux gaining popularity in common use, it’s interesting and important to look at it’s business aspect. As Linux is free and open-source and mostly community driven, which makes it easy and flexible to work with.
Here are some common ways Linux is used by Bussinesses.
#1 Virtualization
Virtualization helps to utilise resources which are not in use and also to use them efficiently by creating virtual machines. A popular software called XenServer made by Citrix, it has made a big impact into the server community, by using an open-source project and that’s what XenServer is, it’s open source or at least somewhat open source.
Basically Zen server allows businesses to stand up entire racks of hosts which is what runs all the virtualized stuff in a data center and usually would have VMware that’s usually the most prevalent virtual host out there and it uses ESX and that is based on FreeBSD and VMware charges a lot for that license to use. It so a very important to know it is extremely expensive as you’re looking at about a half a million dollars maybe, even up to like a quarter of a million depending on licensing deals and partnerships it just depends on the business but that’s a lot of money. Now having said that is there alternatives this the first alternate it’s gonna be hyper-v from Windows because many businesses have volume licensing agreements in these volume licensing agreements you usually buy lot of server licenses more than you need in most instances and you can use those to install hyper-v and do virtualization in Windows Server. However stability and reliability are my main concerns as a system admin so Zen server is a flushed out and stable a virtualization host.
With Citrix you know when price is an issue and to use advanced features that are locked behind a paywall there is a project called XE PNG, but virtualization in Linux and that is my number one pick for how it is utilized in businesses because it can save just a ton of money when you don’t have extra licenses for Windows Server or you can’t afford a VMware setup.
#2 Web Hosting
This is how Linux really got its start because of how stable and reliable it was, most people started setting up Apache error light HTTP on many many Linux servers because most people don’t want their website to go down or a memory leak, etc. So everyone learned how to install LAMP stacks on Linux servers and put websites on them, also because of the flexibility behind Web server like Apache you could assign thousand of different websites all on one simple server assets, now that doesn’t sound very practical for some as you don’t want to install that many but it is still quite good and very powerful especially considered to other Proprietary alternatives which can be headache often times like Microsoft Windows Server. So as the systems admin Linux was a no-brainer, that’s how Linux is gaining more and more popularity. People needed to host a website and also want it to be cost effective and stable also reliable and Linux was all those things, and a LAMP stack is Linux, Apache, MySequel and PHP which can basically host and all those components together can mostly run any website can run off of those four components and that’s just kind of the basis of web hosting almost every single web host on the Internet and over 90 percent are hosted on Linux.
#3 Telephony
A lot of people don’t know that most telephony products are actually based in Linux the biggest dog in the room is something called asterisks which is open-source freeware product or free software, it basically makes it to where you can have a Linux box you put asterisks on it and then you can do telephone calls using SIP trunk. Instead of spending 20k to 50k dollars on a phone system, and an entire intercom system can be set for probably less than $1,000 which is quite amazing and you could even buy a trunk to come into that and have your entire auto attendant all that just laid out in it. That is just the power of open software and one of the reasons why Linux almost taken over that space.
#4 Networking
This area is quite complicated as in most places there are Cisco shops, and which is kind of a proprietary thing it’s not really based on Linux, but there are a lot of routers and gateways out there that are based on Linux so it’s very important to know that networking is kind of taking off at the moment, which gradually pull away from Cisco a little bit, but you can’t beat the reliability of Cisco when it comes to networking which makes it hard to critisize but one of the problems is that you need somebody that’s like CCNA certified in there and knows what they’re doing it is great networking equipment once it’s set up but the rest of everything else most gateways most residential routers all that is based on Linux ends you can SSH into them and change them around and sometimes do lot of things with them and they are open and flexible. But in the end networking in businesses got a little sidetracked sometimes that happens but it is the future and the present day reality of networking is a lot of it is based on Linux.
#5 File Sharing
If you’re file sharing through Linux and this is mainly for small or some medium-sized businesses that use the Linux file share typically, it’s like a box that is connected to your existing active directory, and the active directory is almost always Windows you know almost everybody has a domain controller that runs Windows Server and then you connect these boxes up to them, and they’re running Linux and then you go ahead and do that I think that’s gonna change hopefully in the next five years.
Linux for business and just kind of show people how you would take or start to transition some of your existing tech out of the old school window servers and start making it more operating system agnostic which will really help with adoption coming up and also you know you shouldn’t be reliant on a Windows or Windows server and there’s some just best practices that you probably need to follow not necessarily a full conversion. This is mainly the backbones it’s really in just important to know that because a lot of people don’t realise how much Linux is in the business community.
Nice article very insightful