Linux has been making strong inroads on Wall Street, where it has moved beyond small, non-essential applications to true enterprise class systems. Linux is attractive not only because of its low-cost but especially because of its high performance in real-time transaction processing, a key requirement for large brokerage firms.
Although such firms are notoriously tight-lipped about their technology initiatives, it appears that enterprise-class Linux systems are fully operational at Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Reuters. Vendors pushing Linux on Wall Street include H-P, Oracle, Sun., and IBM, which is building a porting and testing center in New York to help firms migrate to Linux.
"Every major Wall Street firm has at least a pilot going on with Linux," says Vern Brownell, former CTO of Goldman Sachs, "and more than half of them are probably in production with mission critical applications."
CIO Information Network has the story.
