Mitch Mastellone, CTO for Synchronicity, Inc. - ?Synchronicity has two main product lines, the Developer Suite for design collaboration and management and the Publisher Suite for design reuse, IP distribution, and support. We started shipping the Developer Suite on Linux last year and the larger, server-oriented Publisher Suite will be available on Linux before the end of 2003. Once we announce support for a particular OS like Red Hat Linux 7.3, new releases arrive simultaneously with versions for other OSs. We have a mixed OS development environment. Though it's mostly Solaris, we also use HP-UX, AIX, Windows, and Linux machines, so we can build and test every night on all the platforms we support. We have 120+ customers and they range from Linux activists to being totally indifferent. With its strong potential performance/price ratio on 32-bit machines, many of our customers are adopting Linux and we have responded to this significant customer demand by supporting the common variants of Linux.?
?Since we primarily develop our software on other flavors of Unix, supporting Linux is not difficult, but the number of configurations adds to our quality test burden. The flipside is, the standardization of Unix-related platforms (e.g., a common underlying kernel) should help us reduce that complexity going forward. Both the complications and potential solutions apply to our customers as well. Again, there is a range of love for Linux in the marketplace. Some engineers love it because they have more control, which might makes some IT people nervous. At other companies, the IT department is trying to force Linux roll-outs as a cost-saving measure, but the engineers really love their proven Solaris or HP-UX. The various support models evolving in the marketplace will also affect Linux adoption.?
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Response from Mitch Mastellone, CTO- Synchronicity
[re: sanjaygangal]
