LATEST INTELLIGENCE
While the latter counts dollars when
companies sell goods and services to each
other, GDP doesn’t. Depending on a country’s
industrial makeup, aggregate revenue may
run from two to three times GDP.
2 For 2019, IDC has estimated global
business revenue of US$188 trillion. Of this,
IDC estimates that at least 40% is touched
by software. Think email for employees,
production management systems, inventory
control software, engineering design
software, customer relationship management
(CRM), website management, and so on.
Probably the only part of global revenue
not touched by software is the revenue
generated by very small enterprises that
don’t use computers, pick and-shovel
operations, and personal and professional
service outfits that still rely on paper
or human memory. For 2019, IDC has
estimated the IT “footprint” at US$81 trillion.
Now, consider that all of that software driving
the IT footprint has to run on an operating
system … and that much of the software
“touching” enterprise functions run on servers
… and that IDC’s server workloads tracker
has more than 50% running on Linux … and
that RHEL accounts for around 25% of Linux
operating systems deployed (including paid
and free versions). Then do the math. For
2019, IDC has estimated the RHEL “footprint”
at US$10 trillion.
•
•
FROM WHENCE US$10 TRILLION?
Figure 2 shows some of the enterprise
functions that will drive the IT, Linux, and
RHEL footprints. But in 2019, the workloads
running on RHEL with the most impact are
shown in Figure 3. The individual workload
footprints vary somewhat as a result of the
investment in software, but more on the
portion of enterprise activity affected.
For instance:
• Enterprise resource management (ERM)
and production applications affect a huge
portion of many enterprises’ expenses,
•
•
which, in turn, make up generally 70% or
more of revenue.
Collaboration applications, say email,
may affect every employee in an
enterprise — but not necessarily impact
large chunks of revenue or expenses.
Labor costs, most “touched” by email, are
less than production and raw material
costs in many industries.
Supply chain management can affect a
significant portion of expenses, but the
software application itself is deployed less
than other major enterprise applications.
IT infrastructure — security, networking,
servers, and web services to customers
and suppliers — permeates all companies
with computers, touching both revenue
and expenses.
Customer relationship management may
touch many enterprise customers, but
usually not all — or at least all at once.
And so on. By region, the RHEL economic
footprint is fairly evenly distributed —
35% from the Americas, 33% from Asia/
Pacific, and 32% from EMEA (the rest of
the world). n
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