Linux revenue dips

Linux revenue dipped in 2001, says the International Data Corporation (IDC), but the open source operating system is still on track to earn $280 million in revenue by 2006, according to latest estimates. The research house reports that the 5% decline in Linux revenue in 2001 follows two consecutive years of growth. Despite the dip, revenue for Linux is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28% for the next five years, from $80 million in 2001 to $280 million in 2006. Shipment of Linux servers was flat in 2001 compared with previous years but client licences were up almost 50%. IDC says indications are that the growth in Linux as a client operating system can be attributed to Linux`s strong showing in the Asia-Pacific market which was responsible for 34% of all new Linux shipments.

Sun Microsystems has taken many of the high-end resiliency features it perfected in the StarFire, StarCat and StarKitty enterprise servers and rolled it into its midrange servers. Among the features included in the new midrange products from Sun are enhanced auto-recovery and pro-active self-diagnostics. The new features will not only distinguish the midrange Sun servers from the V series but the company is also hoping that they will command a higher premium and sell better against competitors HP and IBM. While the midframe machines ship with a single service processor, customers can add a second processor to increase availability. And with auto-recovery now included, the original manual switchover between processors has been automated.

Following reports yesterday that Silicon UK was selling off assets to CNET, TheRegister today reports that the ill-fated French arm of the Silicon Media Group is insolvent. The smaller European Silicon branches have been struggling for some time and there was speculation that they too could go the way of the UK arm. The next step, according to TheRegister, is for the company to close down completely or opt for a creditors` agreement to nurse the company back to solvency. [More at TheRegister]

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