The Linux Business Case: Talent

The good news is the answer (at least for the first question) is: Yes, there is plenty of Linux help out there if you need it.

A few years ago, Linux talent was a relative rarity, but, today, with Linux becoming as mainstream as other operating systems, talent is lot easier to come by.

Of course, it does depend on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are looking for someone to run Apache on a few Web servers, no problem. If you want to port all of your legacy applications over to a Linux cluster, then you might have to do some searching, said Sheila Baker, senior vice president of Marketing for VA Software, which sells open-source development tools to Fortune 500 companies and owns Sourceforge.net.

But, since Linux is based on UNIX, UNIX developers are often more than capable -- with a little retraining -- to handle most corporate Linux needs. Also, the good, hands-on IT folks have probably been dabbling with Linux at home for years and have a good familiarity with it, said Bill Weinberg,Open Source Architecture specialist and Linux evangelist at the Open Source Development Labs.

"In many cases the more motivated ones are doing this on their own time already," he said. "They'll want Linux on their resume in case they go looking or they're doing it at home as a hobby or companies have instigated pilot programs that aren't close to deployment but are getting people ready for that transition."

Then there are the universities. Expect a large crop of recent computer school grads (as well as night school attendees) to have practical experience with Linux. It is being taught at most major colleges and universities around the globe and has been for the past four or five years, said Weinberg.

The one area where talent may be particularly hard to come by is desktop Linux. But with no mad rush to dump Microsoft, this may or may not be a problem. Also, many of the same people attending school or using Linux at home, are doing so on a Linux desktop and this may help alleviate shortages for help desks.

However, as more and more middleware tools that run on Linux hit the market, shortages for mid-level talent that can do more than run a server but aren't necessarily kernal developers may crop up.

That is where companies like Computer Associates (CA) feel there is a role to play and money to be made. As Linux becomes more and more popular, the need for tools to manage this environment along side more traditional AS400, Solaris and Wintel systems, for example, will expand the market for their management tools.

Companies taking this approach to Linux can expect to need fewer Linux "gurus" on staff and rely on vendors to fill in the big pieces or deal with major outages, said Yogesh Gupta, CA's chief technology officer. Most of Gupta's clients are more interested in a reliable, easy-to-administer environment than which OS is running the software.

"If you talk to most customers that buy enterprise software from enterprise vendors, the ability to provide them with mission critical support ... is sometimes more important than the features of the product," he said.

If, however, you feel the experts are wrong because you can't find talent in your area, this may have more to do geography than availability, said Weinberg. Talent is not evenly distributed nationally or globally so there are pockets were certain skills sets may be in short supply and therefore in more demand.

In Dallas and Atlanta for example, John Baschab, co-founder and executive vice president of Impact Innovations Group, a staffing and consulting firm, there is not a big draw for Linux help in his two markets.

"If you go out and look on the job boards or our internal database you just don't see people majoring in Linux," he said. "So, if you are an IT manager making a decision, on balance, you are probably going to pick Wintel. Or, if you pick Linux, you are going to put it in the corner. Maybe it's on a file server."

When he does come across Linux in his customer's shops, which range from mid-sized companies up to the Fortune 500, it's usually because someone working with it at home has introduced it into the IT department.

Also, many of his clients (like those of CA) are more interested in ease-of-use than the cutting edge.

"There's a lot of comfort ... especially if you're a mid-sized company, knowing that if your tier one, two or three (helpdesk) cannot fix it, you can always open a ticket with Microsoft and Microsoft will keep the ticket open until the problem is solved ... I get the sense from my clients on the consulting front that its going to be difficult enough to manage something that's open source that they're just not ready to add that to the list of things they need to learn this year."