The enterprise server market belongs to Linux now. Clouds, web-servers, you name it, Linux runs it. One of the biggest reasons for this remains that Linux is cheaper than the alternatives. But that doesn’t mean Linux has all its way when fighting against legacy systems. Take, for example, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Wanting to save money, the IRS set up a migration plan in 2014 to move 1,400 databases and 190 applications designed to operate on Oracle Sparc servers running Solaris Unix to IBM mainframes running zLinux. According to the Department of Treasury auditors, the “IRS made a decision to consolidate platforms and migrate applications to Linux-based operating systems.”

In theory, two-thirds of applications and databases were supposed to have been moved by December 2016… in theory.

IRS Linux move delayed by lingering Oracle Solaris systems More>