Linux the future for India?

BANGALORE : Vijay Shekhar, who runs a team of 60 people sending scores to cricket-crazy fans through India's booming cell phone networks, feared that using cheap Linux software for his business could cause problems.

Instead, Shekhar says he loves the Linux operating system after paying only a tenth of the 400,000-rupee ($8,703) cost of the competing Windows package from Microsoft Corp.

About 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, says Linux distributor Red Hat Inc, up from nothing in January.

Besides the plain switch of desktop operating systems to Linux, analysts say the bigger worry for Microsoft is the growing use of Linux among India's pool of an estimated 400,000 software developers.

Linux could use India as a back door into the lucrative global business software market as Indian programmers, hunting for low-cost programming tools, use it as their basic system and introduce it to customers.

Indian programmers are at the epicentre of a global boom in outsourcing of business software programming, back office and call centre services. India now has 60 percent of the offshore IT services market, which consultant Gartner estimates is worth $16 billion.

"India is a key battleground for Microsoft as it tries to get a pool of developers loyal to its computing platform," said Partha Iyengar, director at market researcher Gartner India.

But analysts say it will be tough for Linux to take a strangle-hold in the key software of big firms.

Microsoft cites the ease of use, security and support as key factors that give Windows dominance of personal computers and servers, while Linux still has a small percentage of the global market.

Once a fringe interest for programmers and professors, Linux, created by Finland's Linus Torvalds, now has a market share of about 20 percent of servers -the workhorse computers that feed Web Sites, email and other data to desktop PCs.

"Commercial users have moved from a stage of pilot runs and experiments to doing serious business on Linux systems," said S. Sabyasachi, analyst at industry researcher IDC India.

Linux advocates say open-source software is ideal for India, whose population of more than one billion means labour is cheap, but personal computers are a lot less affordable. New versions of Windows often require newer computers with more memory and speed.

GOVERNMENT BACKING

Linux already drives India's National Stock Exchange, where day traders have taken the top slot from the Bombay Exchange. Linux is also the favourite of the national agency making supercomputers and Bombay's Breach Candy Hospital.

"Linux is so reliable that it helps our department give an impression we have all the time in the world," said Dilip Desai, IT manager of the seaside hospital which serves affluent clients.

Linux enthusiasts are upbeat.

"We are not seeing large replacements of Microsoft's software with Linux, but it is happening in bits and pieces," said Atul Chitnis, a senior adviser to the Bangalore Linux Users' Group.

Linux users say a four-day visit to India last November by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who announced $400 million in local investments, drew attention to Linux.

The cash-strapped federal government has launched a "Linux India Initiative" to use the system in schools and state agencies. "Open source fits perfectly with India's needs," said S. Ramakrishnan, director at India's IT ministry.

Seventy percent of India's 1.05 billion people live in rural areas, and the nation has only eight million PCs.

Companies like Red Hat, which sell standardized versions of Linux, are thrilled. "We see an immense opportunity here," said Sachin Dabir, who heads enterprise sales at Red Hat in India.

© Reuters