72% of IT professionals from companies with more than 100 employees have decided to migrate to Linux. More than half of IT executives are planning to accelerate the adoption of Linux in 2009, according to a recent survey conducted by Novell and the market analyst firm IDC. The current economic situation is not good for most companies and so there is an increased interest in open source and operating systems based on Linux in particular.

The study is based on the results of a survey of over 300 IT professionals from organizations with over 100 employees, in which 72% are actively evaluating or have already decided to shift to Linux servers this year, more than two thirds, 68% said the same in the field of desktop computers.

Cuts in expenditure and support costs are the major factors taken into account while migrating to Linux. More than four in ten plan to add more Linux-based systems in the next year or two, and half wants Linux to be the primary server platform within five years.

The people who are reluctant to make this move cite the lack of application support and poor interoperability with Windows and other environments, as their main concerns.