There's a move underway that is quietly signaling a fundamental shift in enterprise computing. Over the last couple of years, many businesses of all sizes have moved their critical applications from proprietary UNIX platforms to industry-standard servers running Windows and Linux.

In fact, enterprise computing on Linux and Windows is catching on so fast that the days of the UNIX-only application may be numbered. This past September, according to published reports, a Gartner analyst proclaimed at the Open Source Summit in Las Vegas, "I expect that, around 2009, we will have seen the last application developed specifically for UNIX."

SAP and Oracle on Industry-Standard Servers

To a large degree, this move is being championed by leading enterprise players like SAP and Oracle, which for years had made their products exclusively available for UNIX or other proprietary platforms. More recently these companies have introduced suites of software products for non-proprietary, standardized platforms. In fact, the majority of new enterprise software licenses for both Oracle and SAP are on Windows or Linux.

Companies like SAP, Oracle and Dell serve as proof-of-concept models for the marketplace and have embraced industry-standard technology to run their own enterprises. Dell runs its comprehensive, mission-critical IT environment using Windows and Linux on its own servers. When Dell upgraded its IT supply chain system by moving from UNIX servers to Oracle RAC 10g clusters on PowerEdge servers, it realized more than $5 million in IT savings. (For more information on Oracle at Dell, click here.)

Oracle develops and tests its own products on standardized servers, and has chosen the x86 platform to support its most demanding applications and services. Oracle's Austin Data Center, which hosts On Demand Managed Applications for thousands of customers, uses 12,000 Linux servers to run enterprise applications including Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Oracle E-Business Suite On Demand. Another 15,000 Dell Linux servers power Oracle's Global IT operations.

Why are Oracle and SAP forsaking UNIX in favor of x86 servers running Linux or Windows? Many customers are aggravated by the expense and management headaches of maintaining proprietary UNIX environments. In addition to expensive licensing fees and maintenance contracts, proprietary systems are cumbersome and costly to scale to meet growing workloads and changing business needs.

The Benefits of Scale-Out Flexibility

As the case studies on the Scale Out Advantage site illustrate, companies that have moved to industry standard servers are experiencing big benefits. Acuity Brands Lighting consolidated onto Dell industry-standard servers running Linux and Windows to support Exchange, Oracle database and Oracle E-Business suite, achieving a new level of scalability: "…we simply add nodes to increase capacity," says their director of enterprise engineering.

Motivated by a desire to eliminate server sprawl and move its applications to a common platform, Tellabs has scaled out its SAP environment onto a virtualized server farm comprised of Dell x86 machines. "We can launch applications in hours instead of weeks," says their CIO.

Flooring manufacturer Mannington Mills rolled out an entire SAP Enterprise Resource Planning system on Dell Windows-based servers to achieve lower TCO and the ability to scale out to support growth. And Edmunds.com moved its entire IT infrastructure, including Active Directory, Exchange and extensive website hosting services, to Red Hat Linux Dell servers. "[These] servers enable us to scale out better, perform better and deliver the high availability we require," says the company's executive director.

Price, Performance and Availability

It seems clear that price, performance and availability are driving the adaptation of industry-standard servers as the enterprise computing platform of choice. Windows-based products like SQL and Exchange have evolved into robust, stable and scalable applications that are fully capable of supporting mission-critical operations.

Today's powerful, quad-core industry-standard servers are far less costly to buy, maintain and scale than UNIX systems. Moreover, high availability technologies like clustering, virtualization and storage area networks are now becoming familiar components of Windows and Linux environments. This combination of low-cost hardware and the latest technologies that support business growth make a compelling case for scaling business applications on industry-standard servers.

DELL: Helping Enterprises Scale Business Applications

Dell has partnered with Oracle and SAP to create flexible and reliable IT environments that make it easy to roll out and scale enterprise applications.

Dell tests, validates and integrates Oracle Database solutions on Red Hat Linux®, Novell®SuSe® Linux and Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003. To ensure that all components work together, Dell tests the entire solution stack—the servers, storage, switches, operating systems, and Oracle Database software. And Dell makes moving to Oracle database easy, with a CD that automates the deployment of the server OS that is optimized for Oracle Database configuration. Dell also provides similarly tested and validated configurations for SQL Server 2005 and Secure Exchange environments.

Dell Oracle Database Services can help businesses: migrate Oracle Databases from UNIX and legacy environments to flexible, proven x86 environments; rapidly implement Oracle Database and Real Application Clusters (RAC) on Dell servers and storage platforms; assess the Oracle environment and provide tuning recommendations. Dell also partners with Oracle to offer Oracle Consulting Services for virtually all IT requirements.

In its partnership with SAP, Dell provides high-performance Linux and Windows-based solutions that can cut IT costs and support business growth. Dell's tested server configurations and integrated software applications are fully certified for SAP environments. SAP has recognized Dell's commitment to customer satisfaction by twice awarding it the prestigious SAP Pinnacle award.

Dell Infrastructure Consulting Services help businesses plan, implement and maintain their standards-based systems and the IT environments in which they operate. Dell's global SAP Competency Center engineers can provide custom configurations for your SAP implementations and benchmark SAP applications on Dell PowerEdge , PowerVault , and Dell/EMC platforms.

The move is on to scalable, high performance, highly available industry standards-based solutions for business critical computing. Dell can help businesses move from the costs and challenges of maintaining proprietary environments to the flexibility and benefits of standards-based computing.