JG: There will always be niche-market players. But more and more, clients want stability in a software vendor. Nobody has to worry about SAS being bought by, say, SAP or Oracle. We don't have to go public. Ever.

CWHK: You started as a university professor, then moved to the private sector. Do you see a current trend towards computer science students learning Linux skills at universities with a goal towards being hired by major vendors?

JG: There's no built-in motivation for hardware vendors to supply an OS with their product. And we see speeds and performance continually improving-dual-core, quad-core processors, with multithreading [capabilities]. So they must ask themselves: do we adapt our Unix [OS] to run on these new machines? So yes, I see a future for Linux in that environment.

CWHK: What's your edge in the service-on-demand business?

JG: We do about US$30 million annually for a number of banks and pharmaceutical companies who send us data that we analyze overnight and send back. This business is growing at about 30 percent a year-some companies force us to sign multiple NDAs [non-disclosure agreements].