While Web interfaces increasingly dominate the client-to-edge portion, a diverse set of back-end platforms and infrastructure types still presents a hard slog for developers and IT managers.

As Linux spreads across the infrastructure, the dream of building reusable and redeployable applications and middleware edges closer to reality.

Today, Linux is a large, even dominant force at the core and edge of the enterprise, ubiquitous in the data center and in infrastructure, and it's making inroads on the corporate desktop and in phones, handhelds and other clients. As OSDL and community projects continue to close technical gaps and remove barriers to deployment, Linux will increasingly provide a viable platform for business-critical, end-to-end enterprise applications.

Bill Weinberg is senior technology analyst at Open Source Development Labs Inc., a nonprofit, vendor-supported organization that helps companies use Linux.