Linux market to exceed $35 billion by 2008.

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, has announced the completion of a global Linux market share and forecast study conducted by market research firm IDC that predicts the overall market revenue for desktops, servers, and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008.

The new study presents a measurement of shipments and the installed base of servers and PCs running Linux that takes into consideration Linux shipped with new hardware deliveries, Linux running aboard redeployed systems, and instances where Linux is used as a guest operating system. When this expanded view of the marketplace is considered, the resulting server market for shipments and redeployments with Linux is increased by 36% over net new shipments in 2004.

Another key finding of interest to independent software vendors and customers is predicted revenue growth for packaged applications and infrastructure software running on Linux, a market opportunity IDC forecasts will exceed $14 billion in the next four years, growing at a 2003-2008 compound annual rate of more than 44 percent.

"This is the first authoritative and comprehensive snapshot of how people truly use Linux and it's not surprising for us to see that the adoption is far ahead of even some of the most optimistic estimates," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL.