Linux use doubles in financial organisations

Ever since IBM and Sun have been pushing the Linux solution, many financial institutions have been jumping on board with the alternative OS for their data needs. Even with Linux doing so well, there are still of course some concerns regarding the compliance side of things. As 2005 pushes on, most professionals in the industry are confident that this will be resolved as time goes on.

Support for Linux in the traditionally conservative world of financial services has more than doubled in the last year according to the latest market intelligence.

Support for open source technologies from mainstream suppliers such as IBM and Sun has boosted the number of financial institutions using Linux from 27 percent last year to 58 percent in 2005, according to a report from financial technology researchers Finextra.

In fact the the growing support for Linux has been the single biggest technology change in financial organisations over the past 12 months, say the researchers writing in the Financial Technology Strategies 2005 survey.

The researches attributed the substantial increase to the investment banks, asset management firms and exchanges in question looking for operational efficiencies while also trying to drive down costs. There was also a greater confidence in the suitability and stability of the technology due support from a broad range of vendors.

Other findings from the survey of 92 financial organisations included more focus on web services and new architectures over the coming year as legacy platforms and infrastructure are replaced with emerging technologies such as grid computing and blade servers.