Big Data Analytics
Solving the Pressing Need for Linux Talent
The Linux Foundation shared the below infographics recently. Click on it and you get the associated report. The short message is, if you are an expert in Linux you are in high demand because companies don’t find enough experts due to the Cloud and Big Data boom.
Unless cloning machines are discovered later this year, quickly expanding the number of Linux experts is unlikely to happen. This means total cost of ownership for enterprises is likely to rise. This is ironic since Linux is all about open source and providing some of the most amazing solutions for free.
The obvious alternative is to focus on Microsoft products. They are relatively cheap in total cost of ownership since licenses are “payable” and average Windows skills can be easier found.
However Microsoft is loosing the server war, especially in the web application space. So this is not a winning strategy if you are going to do Cloud.
How to Solve the Pressing Need for Linux Talent?
The only possible strategy is to lower the number of experts needed per company. Larger companies always will need some but they should be focused on the “interesting high-value tasks”. This concept of interesting and high-value is key. With the number of cloud servers exploding, we can not expect the number of experts to explode.
Open source products like Puppet and Chef have helped to alleviate the pain for the more “skilled” companies. One DevOp was able to manage more than ten times as many machines as before. Unfortunately these server provisioning tools are not for the faint of heart. They require experts that know both administration and coding.
It is time for the next generation of tools. Ubuntu, the number #1 Cloud operating system, is leading the way with Juju. If Linux wants to continue to be successful then the common problems, the boring problems, the repetitive problems, etc. should be solved. Solved by Linux gurus in such a way that we, the less IT gifted, can get instant solutions for these common problems.
We need a Linux democracy in which the lesser skilled, but unfortunately the majority, can instantly reuse best-in-class blueprint solutions. Juju is a new class of tools that gives you instant solutions. For all those common problems: scaling a web application, monitoring your infrastructure, sharding MongoDB, replicating a database, installing a Hadoop cluster, setting up continuous integration, etc. Juju can offer solutions. The individual software components have been “charmed”.
A Charm allows the software to be instantly deployed, integrated and scaled. However the real revolution is just starting. Juju will have bundles pretty soon. Technically speaking, a bundle is a collection of pre-configured and integrated Charms. In lays speak, a bundle is an instant solution for a common problem. You instantly deploy a bundle [one command or drag-and-drop] and you get a blue-print solution. Since Juju is open source, the community can create as many instant solutions as there are common problems.
So if you want to scale your IT solutions without stretching neither your budget or cloning your employees and without the lock-in of any proprietary and expensive commercial software, then you should try Juju today. Play with the GUI or install Juju today.
[This post originally appeared on Telruptive and is republished with permission.]
- Consultant
Maarten Ectors
Expert in Telecom and Disruptive Technologies
