Since the Datapro report entitled "1997 International User Ratings Survey of UNIX and NT" (February 1998, by Mary I. Hubley) is protected by copyright, I cannot simply publish it here. I will endeavor, however, to summarize a few points that relate to Linux in the corporate environment:

  1. Linux is the 4th largest corporate UNIX operating system, with 14% of the surveyed sites running Linux. It is preceded by Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. Linux rose from 7th place last year.

  2. "Linux was the top rated operating system in both overall satisfaction and in most of the individual categories." (Note: this includes NT!)

  3. "Linux did far better than all the other operating systems in several important categories--product functionality, availability, flexibility, price, cost of ownership, Internet readiness, and JAVA support." (Again, this includes NT!)

  4. Buying plans indicate that Linux marketshare should continue to grow.

  5. Linux received the lowest ratings in scalability, security, maturity, and ease of use. I know that a lot of work has been and is being done in scalability and ease of use. Maturity is not surprising, given its age and rapid advances in development. Security may be the biggest action item of the bunch, but, even so, it still beat NT in this catagory.

  6. Linux is the most used corporate UNIX in Germany, tied with HP-UX. Germany is cited as the most leading-edge European country for its use of Linux and NT.

  7. Linux is the most used corporate UNIX in Australia/New Zealand, tied with SCO.

  8. Linux is tied for second place in the Asian corporate UNIX marketplace.

  9. Linux was rated much better than NT in performance and cost of ownership, in addition to the catagories listed earlier (see #3).

  10. On the whole, UNIX is still gaining marketshare.

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