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Wall Street Embraces Linux
Lisa DiCarlo, 03.27.02, 10:50 AM ET
h..p://www.forbes.com/home/2002/03/27/0327linux.html
NEW YORK - Rick Carey has staked his reputation and his job on a project that he concedes is risky--but with potentially huge returns. He is the person in charge of a top-down implementation of Linux software at Merrill Lynch.
Merrill (nyse: MER - news - people) is one of many Wall Street brokerages doing a large-scale Linux deployment in an effort to cut their costs and boost revenue. Indeed, these banks have had a very tough year: Merrill's sales declined more than 10%, to $38.7 billion last year, and profits dried up to 56 cents per share, from $4.06 in 2000. The company laid off 9,000 employees last year to reduce compensation expenses.
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Merrill and others talked about their Linux plans at an event hosted by Red Hat Software (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people) in New York Tuesday night. Red Hat is a leading Linux distributor but is experiencing no shortage of pain itself. Sales for fiscal 2002 ended Feb. 28 fell to $86.8 million, from $103 million. Analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial are expecting the company to break even in the May and August quarters.
Merrill's plans, and others like it, are very significant because they are the first companywide--rather than departmental--Linux implementations. While not without risk, this lends an enormous amount of credence to the argument that Linux can be used in place of more established technologies like Unix.
Second, it also shows that Linux does in fact threaten Unix. Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people), the leading Unix provider, has only recently communicated what can be construed as a semi-comprehensive Linux strategy--perhaps prodded by customers like Merrill.
"We are telling all of our vendors that they need to have some kind of Linux strategy," says Carey, chief technology architect at Merrill. "We are hearing that consistently from everyone on Wall Street."
Credit Suisse First Boston, which has been working with Linux since late 2000, has replaced some of its Unix technology.
"Initially it was about cost savings but it has been a benefit to the business because we're profiting from being more flexible," says Steve Yatko, chief technology officer of securities IT at CSFB. "Our trading volume has increased [twenty-fold], and our customers are seeing better pricing. And things that used to take days [like installing applications and doing management tasks] now take minutes."
Indeed, one of the big benefits that Carey sees is that Merrill can write an application once and then deploy it with minimal work on mainframes, minicomputers, desktops, laptops and handhelds--whether it be on Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people) hardware or something else.
This contrasts with Unix in that developers write software for every version of Unix, including for tools and patches. This approach, says Carey, is time-consuming and expensive. If a Unix project doesn't work out for some reason, the technology is rarely transferable to another project.
"When I have proprietary hardware and proprietary software, I have sunk costs into that project that I can't recover," says Carey, adding that commodity technologies are more easily transferable. "Unix took Wall Street fifteen years to master. Nobody has time for that."
But there are risks in putting so much behind Linux. For starters, there are legal implications. Does anybody own the intellectual property of the "open-source" software? How exposed are companies to patent violation?
Even more important, who is accountable? Linux is an amalgamation of the input of many companies and individual software engineers. So whom do you call when it breaks? Also, contrary to popular belief, Linux is not really "free." How are large-scale licensing agreements to be worked out?
"Some of these things make us very uncomfortable," says Carey, who is trying to hammer out the details.
But he is comfortable predicting that Merrill's investments thus far--which he won't disclose--will be accretive this year. If it works out the way he hopes, Merrill could be savings tens of millions of dollars annually within three to five years.
The support from Wall Street firms comes as Red Hat introduced software called Advanced Server, which was endorsed by leaders like Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people), IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people), Dell Computer (nasdaq: DELL - news - people), Compaq Computer (nyse: CPQ - news - people) and Veritas Software (nasdaq: VRTS - news - people). But despite the thumbs-up, Linux isn't ready for life-and-death situations.
"Would I put an air traffic control system on Linux right now? No," says Carey. "But can it get there within five years? Absolutely."
CSFB's Yatko was just as direct. "We don't treat Linux as a toy. We've got real business problems that we need to solve."
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