IDC's Operating Environments and Utility Computing Infrastructure Software service helps product, marketing, and strategic planning professionals assess where the best opportunities exist for leveraging hardware products and application and infrastructure software. This service analyzes the growth or decline of individual operating system markets and closely tracks the transition between platforms as user preferences change over time. It also provides subscribers direct access to IDC's top industry experts, who can supply competitive analysis and positioning advice, identify strategic partnering opportunities, assist with speaking to the investment community, provide press quotes, and more. This market intelligence uses end-user research along with supply-side data and analysis to generate future market sizes based on total revenue opportunity and shipment and installed base projections.

This service covers the following segments of the operating environments and utility computing infrastructure software market:

• Windows operating environments
• Linux, open source, and Unix operating environments
• Mobile and device system software
• Utility computing system software

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• The continued transition to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
• Changes to licensing, including those driven by subscription versus perpetual licensing and those caused by utility computing
• Linux/Unix compatibility and interoperability
• Migration between Unix and Linux operating environments
• System-independent computing
• Virtual hardware environments and multioperating system configurations
• Software products that support grid computing, utility computing, and on-demand computing

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. How is the market dividing up between Microsoft and Linux?
2. What trends are driving the migration to Linux from other platforms?
3. How are Linux client operating environments growing in capability and capturing market share?
4. How are end users leveraging virtualization layers and multiple operating environments aboard server and client systems?
5. Who is adopting utility computing and how?

IDC analyzes the strategies, market positions, and future directions of major vendors in the operating environments and utility computing infrastructure software market. A representative list of these vendors may include:

Apple, FreeBSD, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Mandrakesoft, Microsoft, NCR, NEC, Novell (including its SUSE and Ximian Divisions), PolyServe, Red Flag, Red Hat, The SCO Group, SGI, Softricity, Starfire Technologies, SteelEye, Sun Microsystems, Unisys, VERITAS, and VMware.

Throughout the year, this service will offer insight into the latest trends impacting the market. Potential studies include:

Microsoft's relentless development pace is leaving Windows 2000 behind as the company focuses on Longhorn, the successor to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. This document examines what this new technology initiative will include and when customers will be ready to start thinking about another Microsoft operating environment.

These documents provide five-year projections for operating environment unit shipments, revenue, and installed base among the most popular operating environments, including Windows, Linux, and Unix.

This document discusses the maturation of virtual operating environment software that supports multiple and concurrent operating systems aboard a single hardware system. Market sizing, usage scenarios, and vendor profiles are included.

Linux continues to reinforce its position as a viable alternative to Unix server operating environments and, combined with Intel architecture hardware, is increasingly becoming a direct competitor to Microsoft. This document looks at the migration taking place and what defines a system that is a good candidate for transitioning from a Unix/RISC solution to Linux/Intel.

It is clear that Web-based applications are one deployment model that will grow in popularity in the future, and major players in the clustering and high-availability software market have taken different approaches to delivering this type of environment. This document explores how customers are taking advantage of this software.