For Open magazine subscribers 

Is Windows dead on the desktop? While the financial analysts continue 
to
lionize Microsoft as the shining knight of IT investment, a number of
chinks are showing up in the armor. As a trademark, the Windows' gold
may be tarnishing as the developers of LindowsOS filed a full legal
challenge to the Windows mark. If you really want to catch the momentum
of Linux this month, though, you just need to turn to general market
analyst opinion that Linux is ahead by a nose in the two-horse race 
with
Windows 2000 to install new IT servers.

Tracking how many road warriors at IBM are being deployed is another
good indicator of what the corporate market wants. This year, the 
number
of IBM Global Service employees with extensive Linux experience rose to
over 2,000 in order to support twice the number of Linux-related
services for customers.     
 
Linux is no less newsworthy on wireless desktops. For a sense of Linux
as a corporate laptop OS, openBench Labs this week delivers a detailed
report on tests of SuSE Linux 8.1. Don’t fall off the chair when you 
see
some surprising performance differences. 

OMV, which is not a household name in some parts of the globe, is an
aggressive Austria-based oil and natural gas company that is refining
its business entirely on SAP, Linux, and consolidation tactics with IBM
mainframes. Suddenly  SAP can showcase OMV as a case in point of how
Linux thwarts ERP nightmares in that company's new design for managing
large volumes of data at levels of high availability and unique
resource-sharing.

Just click http://www.open-mag.com/6038971960.htm to go straight to the
subscriber home page and story links. And remember to send a copy to
your friends mired in proprietary systems. 

Regards,

The editors of Open magazine