f you ask any IT Manager if they would want an operating system that was 'guaranteed' to be available and supporting applications running continuously twenty four hours a day, 365 days a year, then the answer would probably be very simple. However, if you want to measure how much this level of availability is worth to the organisation, then you'll probably get a very different response. Balancing the level of costs involved in supporting a continuously available application against how much any incident of downtime might cost the organisation remains a real concern.

Choosing the operating system that an organisation uses to run its critical applications also remains a tough decision. Linux is growing in popularity compared with other operating systems and using Linux offers a route for organisations to achieve high availability at a potentially lower cost. As a free operating system, the level of cost would be much lower than other approaches and this is contributing to its growing popularity from a business continuity perspective.

An example of this is that Linux has entered the top three operating systems chart by the volume of servers sold for the first time, according to recent research by IDC. Demand for Linux-based, high availability servers is growing at a rate of 40% year-on-year, compared to a growth rate of only 15% for the overall business continuity server market.

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