IDC researchers predict that spending on the Linux ecosystem will rise from $21 billion in 2007 to more than $49 billion in 2011, driven by rising enterprise deployments of Linux server operating systems.

Linux server deployments are expanding from infrastructure-oriented applications to more commercially oriented database and enterprise resource-planning workloads “that historically have been the domain of Microsoft Windows and Unix,” noted IDC analysts in a white paper commissioned by the nonprofit Linux Foundation.

“The early adoption of Linux was dominated by infrastructure-oriented workloads, often taking over those workloads from an aging Unix server or Windows NT 4.0 server that was being replaced,” according to the report’s authors, Al Gillen, Elaina Stergiades and Brett Waldman. These days, however, Linux is increasingly being “viewed as a solution for wider and more critical business deployments.”

Unix Migrations

According to IDC, total software revenue on the Linux platform amounts to $10 billion today, or 4 percent of an overall total of $242 billion. “That share is expected to grow to more than 9 percent by 2011, or $31 billion in Linux-related software revenue in a total market that will grow to $330 billion,” the analysts said.

IDC projects spending on software related to Linux server platforms between 2006 and 2011 will rise at a compound annual growth rate of 35.7 percent — even as the overall spending on Linux software, hardware and services increases at a projected 24.1 percent clip.

“The growth of Linux as a platform for business-oriented workloads appears to be coming largely from migration of existing Unix deployments in combination with organic growth of Linux deployments in these same workload areas,” the study’s authors observed.

Government, financial services, and general services users are “highly likely” to move to Linux as a replacement for existing Unix servers, IDC researchers said. “Other industries have a lower…