Celebrating 25 Years of Digital Disruption

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Linux, the first truly disruptive technology.

To the uninitiated, it is just another average day. But for many of us in the IT field, this day symbolizes the historical beginning of a new era – the birth of open source.

 Linux the FIRST digital disruptor

Make no mistake; this is by no means a pure coincidence. Linux is the first truly disruptive technology to enter the market 25 years ago, having successfully challenged the archaic single vendor software licensing model. The concept is way ahead of its time, created by a collaborative, non-profit, and open source community of smart developers instead of one single company.

Fast forward to today, with Linux, Red Hat has successfully built a subscription-based business model, empowering enterprises to harness its innovative capabilities in a secure, supported and productized way, making this technology accessible to all and cementing its success. What is more remarkable is the best has yet to come.

Anyone can succeed with cloud

With the success of Linux, many new open source projects have emerged in recent years, leading to great IT innovations including virtualization, middleware, databases, storage management, automation, DevOps, containers, and the list simply goes on and on. The most recent and disruptive example being cloud computing, where it all comes together.

Again, cloud computing is not the invention of a single entity, but rather the result of diverse communities collaborating with a singular vision – to reinvent and revitalize businesses in an increasingly digital and connected landscape, and the stake is higher than ever.

For the first time thanks to cloud computing, anyone can develop, deploy and market their ideas, rapidly within days utilizing readily available deployment tools. Moreover, app stores, containers, and automated delivery models like Ansible can further ensure faster adoption, and help businesses scale with minimal upfront investments.

Open source accelerates digitization

To genuinely understand what cloud computing can offer, you’ll need to appreciate the fundamental principles of open source. Through self-governing community efforts and meritocracy, open source can tremendously reduce development time, and at the same time, create more secure and higher quality software. In other words, organisations can take advantage of newer technology faster with open source solutions, which are tailored to meet their needs and free of any vendor’s hidden business agenda.

Take Red Hat for instance; we have been actively contributing to the most exciting open source projects available now and well into the future. But more importantly, giving our customers access to many of these projects in a way which does not lock them in, while offering enterprise-level service and support that accelerates the current pace of digital transformation.

So what began 25 years ago by Linux as the first industry disruptor has now turned into a complete open source ecosystem that is inherently secure, innovation nurturing and enterprise ready. 

To Linus Torvalds and everyone from the open source community, thank you for your contribution on the journey and Happy Birthday, Linux!