Microsoft, Munich, Linux and SMBs

Yesterday, USA Today published an insider's view story about the city of Munich dumping Microsoft software for Linux. The story offers some amazing insight into what Microsoft will offer a large client to remain a customer and why a large enterprise would seek alternative products. The USA Today story recounts events that largely took place in May.

For anyone in doubt that, at least in some markets, Linux poses a threat to Microsoft: In the Jupiter Research report "Spending $2 Billion on 45 million: Microsoft Sales Assault Targets SMBs," 9 percent of small and medium businesses reported running Red Hat Linux on the desktop. The total percentage of Linux on SMB desktops is much higher than 9 percent. Many reasons account for Linux adoption among SMBs--and remember, this stat is for desktops and does not include servers. Possibly the most important: Fragmentation. The SMB market appears to be more fragmented than other business markets, and with smaller penetration of Microsoft products compared to, say, the enterprise.

The SMB report published today concurrent with the official launch of Jupiter Research's Microsoft Monitor service.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at July 15, 2003 08:09 AM