People in the Open World: Stacey Quandt, Industry Analyst, Quandt Analytics
April 2004
Stacey, what do you do?
I am an industry analyst and my focus is Linux and open source software. I identify market trends, and provide advice to end users considering Linux, or who’ve already deployed it, and to give strategic advice to IT vendors.
The real interesting part of this is the ability to look ahead, and to provide insight into not just what’s happening in the market today, but what is likely to occur in the future. So I have the opportunity to play a leadership role through speaking engagements and published research.
Could you tell us a little bit about your background?
I don’t have a computer science background. My college concentration, which was in Asian studies—I took courses in Mandarin and art history and Chinese poetry and Chinese literature – doesn’t directly correlate to the job I have today. But I think when you study a language you learn to appreciate the nuances of another culture. There is a parallel in the open source world where you have a multiplicity of programming languages projects and people interacting. There is a cultural context to Linux and open source software.
So you went from reading Mandarin and Chinese poetry to IT analysis at Giga. How did that come about? How did you make that transition?
The way that I evolved into an IT analyst is far from typical. I was working in Boston for a small high-tech PR firm, and I read an advertisement in The Boston Globe. Giga Information Group was looking for research associates to work in their call center. This was sort of the pulse of the organization, where all of the client inquiries came in via the Web, or the phone. The job entailed fielding inquiries to the appropriate analyst in the organization. I probably spent the first week or so learning the analyst competencies. Giga management didn’t see a linear progression from call center staff to future IT analyst. In fact several times Giga management took pains to emphasize that moving from the call center to work as a research associate with a senior analyst was not a sure thing. Six months into the job a vice Giga president and senior analyst asked me to give him the right of first refusal to become his research associate.
How did you become involved in Linux?
A key part of the transition to IT analyst was to pick a coverage area that complimented but didn’t duplicate the core competency of a mentor analyst. There wasn’t a proven formula for doing this, and I saw a lot of people fail. My mentor analyst covered mid-range UNIX and AS400. So I needed to find an area that he was capable of understanding since he would be reviewing my research prior to publication. This is easier said than done. My mentor encouraged me to focus on host-based access to mainframes and AS/400, which is almost as exciting as watching paint dry. Although I got my feet wet by publishing some inquiry responses and data on survey software tools, I felt like I was literally going no where with the mounting pressure publish or perish.
In the summer of 1998, I was reading about the database vendors – Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Ingress, and IBM DB2 porting to Linux. What intrigued me the most is that these vendors were porting to an operating system that didn’t have support from a major hardware vendor or significant ISV. Also the SMP capabilities in the Linux 2.2 kernel made it only relevant for low-end systems. Linux was not even in the glint in the eye of any of my Giga colleagues. So why were the database vendors scrambling to port to it? Also since no one was covering Linux I wouldn’t have to face a gladitorial conquest to cover Linux.
And lastly, there were multiple distributions, but not a single provider of the OS as in the case of Microsoft. Linux had all the ingredients to make it a good candidate. However, the perception of Linux within Giga of Linux in 1998 was all but encouraging. When I asked my mentor analyst if I could cover Linux he looked completely dumbfounded. All he could muster is "why would you want to do that? You won't like hanging out with those guys. They are all a bunch of longhaired ponytails and communists! However, the kicker was that while I wasn't told not to cover Linux my mentor analyst advised me that the demands of consulting and publishing requirements would leave little time for him to review my research. Some people may have given up there but I persevered. I eventually found another analyst based in Giga’s Santa Clara, CA office to review my research. This working relationship eventually lead to my move to California.
You don't get to make too many mistakes if you want people to buy your advice and opinions. Was it hard to learn enough about Linux to feel comfortable making critical calls on trends and strategies?
Yes. It was hard at first. In the early days, I spent a lot of time reading. I was printing out just about every news story but the market was less mature in those days so technical data was harder to find. I killed a lot of trees. At Giga there was an attitude of putting ones feet to the fire. So I didn’t have a lot of time to think about how comfortable I was in dispensing advice Web sites such the Linux Documentation Project and LinuxToday helped initially. However, I learned the most from developers in the open source community, and through conferences and trade shows.
I attended the first Linux World conference in March of 1999. I also learned a lot by paying my own way to go to conferences such as the Atlanta Linux Showcase, the USENIX Annual Technical Conference and the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. I remember my first Linux versus Windows client inquiry back in 1999. I was at an open source conference in Austin, Texas and I mentioned this in passing to a developer. In the hotel lobby in the wee hours of the morning he explained the difference between kernel space and user space.
It is vital to have a technical understanding in forming a position on the advantages or disadvantages of a technology. Over the years I became much more comfortable with the technical aspects of Linux—so much so that my manager at Giga would tell me at times I was too technical. However, once you have a grasp of a technology and the market dynamics it is much easier to provide insight in to Linux trends and drivers.
It is not like there are 400,000 open source developers that Linus has to manage. Actually the Linux community is a lot smaller than that, especially at the system maintainer level. The operating system is only one part of it; it’s the applications that make all the difference to end-users. I spent a lot of my early days of covering Linux and user space applications such as Apache and Samba. Under standing the drivers and workload characteristics of Linux adoption made a big difference in being able to feel comfortable in the space.
What's been your experience with the Linux community at a practical level? Is it hard to get involved?
It isn't hard to get involved with the Linux community. I think it helped that I'm not like other analysts where I breathe my own exhaust. In fact I’m a bit self-deprecating which tends to work against the whole analyst swagger persona, but also makes me more approachable. As a self-described bottom-feeding analyst, I gained the trust and friendship of a number of people in the open source community.
Because analysts tend to play the role of pundit they can come across as insightful or just plan idiotic. So a best practice is to bounce ideas off of people in the community. I’m not someone who writes code, so I’ll never have to worry about being flamed on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. At a practical level I attended the Bay Area Linux User Group and Silicon Valley user group meetings . People start to see you at trade shows, user group meetings and maybe see a quote in the media now and then and you start to gain recognition. It is through these sort of exchanges that I’ve met Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Brian Behlendorf, Jeremy Allison, Erik Troan, Larry McVoy, Don Becker, Miguel de Icaza, and Linus Torvalds.
What advice would you offer others who want to become an analyst?
I think that my success in this was really due to four things, and two of them actually come from my parents.
My father always talks about the importance of being an ambassador of goodwill. This does sound a bit high-brow but I think what he means is the value of benevolence and kindness in all interactions.
The second thing is you should be optimistic. Becoming an analyst is not easy. There were a lot of people who attempted this at Giga, and not everyone made it. But my mother conveyed to me her infectious sense of optimism, and the need to have a positive outlook. There are going to be ups and downs, and if you only focus on the downs, you're not going to make it.
The third thing, which I learned on my own, is that you have to believe in yourself or no one else will. It was VERY challenging for me at times because I was working with analysts who had of the advantage of years of industry experience, and often they were a few decades older than. They had seen the UNIX market fragment, and so there was a lot of skepticism about Linux. Some people were saying it was System V all over again. And some thought the community was just some a bunch of losers. There was a lot of doubt about this really becoming a viable market. It was an uphill battle.
And lastly, you have to be a critical thinker. At times at Giga I was told I was playing the role of cheerleader. My colleagues would say, “You have to be more skeptical about the Linux market and more analytical, and be more technical” So I had to work on the whole analytical/skeptical/technical part.
But those are really the key ingredients for anyone who wants to be an analyst.
Since you are an analyst and a successful one, we can’t resist the temptation to ask you about what important milestones that lie ahead for Linux?
Large data warehouses running on Linux are inevitable. Collaboration between database vendors and distributions such as Oracle and Red Hat has resulted in improvements in Asynchronous I/O and the 2.6 kernel has better block I/O performance, which is important for data intensive workloads. Increasing data volumes and open source innovation will lead to very large data warehouses running on Linux based SGI Altix, HP Integrity and IBM pSeries systems in the near future.
The debate will continue on open source versus closed source security. However, the trend for the foreseeable future is that more security features will be added at the operating system level. We will see new thresholds being reached on Linux assurance and an industry shift toward the benefits of an open source operating system.
Within the next three years I believe Linux will overtake Windows as the number one operating system based on new server shipments.
Another milestone to watch for is when Linux gains enough momentum on the desktop to pull in more ISVs. There’s the potential for a lot of innovation that could take place in user space applications on Linux. The desktop is Microsoft’s last stronghold in the market. So there’s a lot of potential for Linux to become a much stronger play there.
Do you think there will there be parity for the desktop?
Parity takes a long time… and especially against a convicted monopolist. I think the milestone to look for is when Linux takes 10% of the market. It’s all about when corporate IT says that they will use Linux as their primary desktop operating system. This doesn’t mean that users have to give up on Windows applications, but I think we will see a decline in the use of the Windows operating system on the desktop.
A number of companies are doing pilots right now, but I think the timeframe is more like the next two years. In that time we’ll see tremendous growth in the Linux desktop. "Tremendous" means that we’re going to see it move from being a fringe market to something that ISVs and hardware vendors are porting to and supporting.
Any thoughts when Linux might overtake Windows on the server side?
I think that’s going to happen sooner. I believe we’ll see Linux overtake Windows on the server within the next three to four years, as measured by new server shipments.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
Yes, one thing. I go to a lot of events where I can be the only woman in the room with a bunch of guys, and that’s fine. I have no issues with that, really, except that I just think that more diversity in the Linux ecosystem is always good. I think it is great that Pamela Jones created Groklaw. It would be great to see more women developers involved too– there are a few, but seeing more of them would actually be better. The growth of Linux in India, Brazil, China and other countries may foster an increase of women in the community. I think that’s probably one of the things that, if I could effect any change, it would be to encourage more women to enter the Linux ecosystem.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
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Stacey Quandt
