Latin America - Private sector driven to Linux

Although Linux adoption in Latin America has for years been the subject of loud debates in governments between backers of Microsoft Corp. and proponents of open-source software, a quieter but no less interesting trend is developing among private-sector enterprise users.

While countries such as Brazil and Venezuela have initiatives to promote broad adoption of open-source software in government agencies, Linux, on its own, is steadily winning converts among private-sector IT managers in the region.

Businesses such as banks, pharmaceutical companies and e-commerce providers in Latin America are turning to Linux servers to tackle an increasingly broad array of business and technology problems, attracted by what they perceive as its solid performance and comparatively lower costs. Along the way, Linux is elbowing out various other server operating systems -- primarily Windows, but also Unix, NetWare and legacy platforms.

Users say they trust the technical stability, performance and scalability of Linux servers and are using them to run essential business software, such as messaging systems, firewalls, databases and enterprise applications. Adopters also report solid support from Linux vendors such as IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Novell Inc. and Red Hat Inc., as well as their respective channel partners.

Triple Threat

In 2003, MercadoLibre.com SA, a Buenos Aires-based online marketplace with operations in multiple countries in the region, outgrew its server infrastructure, which was made up entirely of Sun Microsystems Inc. boxes running Solaris. It opted to migrate to HP Itanium machines running a Linux operating system from Red Hat, instead of adding Sun servers to its existing setup.

"With a single shot, we had to solve three issues: availability, scalability and performance. And we had to do it at a low cost," says Edgardo Sokolowicz, MercadoLibre.com's chief technology officer, in an e-mail interview.

MercadoLibre.com, whose biggest shareholder is eBay Inc., today runs its entire operation -- both back-end processes, including an Oracle9i database, and customer-facing Web operations -- on HP Itanium servers with Red Hat Linux server and PC operating systems. The move has slashed maintenance costs and increased performance, Sokolowicz says.

"As the business grew, we added HP Linux servers, improving performance, eliminating single points of failure and obviously doing all this within our budget," Sokolowicz says.

While Linux found its way into MercadoLibre.com by providing improved performance at lower costs, its security won it entry in 2001 to the Mexico office of British publishing company Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Although it had security software from McAfee Inc. and Microsoft's Proxy Server, Macmillan Mexico was suffering from constant virus infections and server intrusions, as hackers routinely deleted server boot-up files and redirected Web site pages, says Jos