Blanchard agrees that Linux doesn't work for every application. In some cases, he has seen Marriott's IT team look at a Linux migration and decide not to proceed.

Overall, the applications moving to Linux at Marriott tend to be high-end Unix systems, he says, and the Linux-based tools that are replacing them are sufficient for Marriott's needs. "We started talking about enterprise-class Linux systems 10 years ago," Blanchard says. "It took a while to get that up and running."

It also helps that Marriott's IT vendors are supporting the initiative. Rather than trying to persuade the hospitality company to stay on Unix systems and high-end server hardware, both IBM and HP have been helping to make those migrations go smoothly. "Our vendors are very comfortable with this transition," Blanchard says.

For now, however, Unix systems are still very much in the mix as Marriott plans migrations on a case-by-case basis. "We do not have a strategy to just close our eyes and go with one particular platform to the exclusion of all others," Blanchard says.

For its part, Qualcomm is getting more bang for its buck from its Solaris 10 systems by taking advantage of the operating system's virtualization technology, Solaris Containers. That feature was also responsible for stopping Bank of New York Mellon's Linux transition plans.