This was the short but strong message from sole Philippine distributor of Red Hat Linux when it introduced a newer version of its enterprise Linux operating system in the country.

Version 4 of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be launched in the Philippines this week.

"[Enterprise] customers are not really thinking of replacing Windows. But we're saying that it is the end of proprietary Unix," said Anson Uy, president of Touch Solutions, sole distributor of Red Hat in the Philippines. Uy was referring to Sun Microsystem's Solaris, a rival operating system.

Red Hat is currently the top vendor of the enterprise-level Linux operating system in the world with more than 500,000 subscriptions, Uy said, citing the latest International Data Corp (IDC) figures.

Novell is a distant second with its 40,000 plus subscriptions.

Red Hat currently sells its own version of the Linux operating system to enterprise customers, but also offers a free version under the Fedora project.

Uy said Red Hat is optimistic that Red Hat’s Version 4 of enterprise Linux will eventually displace Solaris.

"Red Hat and millions of open source developers are outpacing Sun's capacity to innovate," the executive said, noting that Red Hat's newest Linux enterprise version uses "security enhanced" technology developed with the US National Security Agency.

On the other end, new markets are opening to Linux-based systems, he added.

In the Philippines, Uy said that Touch Solutions had seen the number of its clients for Red Hat grow from two in 2002 to over a hundred in 2004. Among its top customers are the Philippine Airlines, SM Group of Companies, and most of the major telecommunications companies in the country, he said.

Uy however expects more government agencies lining up to deploy enterprise-level Linux in 2005.

"The local government units in the country are in fact now shifting to Linux due to a Japanese government grant through the Department of Trade Industry," he added, noting that the e-LGU project will run on HP servers and the Red Hat Linux operating system.

He said that while Philippine government has not yet standardized with Linux, it is now more open to adopting the operating system because if increased support from vendors like Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, HP, and Intel.

In 2004, the company bagged a deal with the commercial bank Standard Chartered, which decided to deploy Red Hat enterprise Linux for its consumer banking, wholesale bank operations and finance. Prior to migrating to Red Hat, the bank was using a mix of Windows, Novell, AIX, and Solaris, according to David Medel, "technical senior" for Standard Chartered Philippines.

With all these developments, Red Hat’s sole distributor in the country said that the company expects 100-percent growth in sales revenues in 2005 from emerging demand from government and continuing adoption of Linux by large enterprise customers.

Meanwhile, Uy revealed that 11 independent software vendors in the Philippines will be "porting" applications running on rival operating systems to Linux this year.

Uy's statements echo an earlier statement made by Sun
Microsystem President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz, aimed at Hewlett Packard’s dying HP-UX operating system.

"With another UNIX falling by the wayside, it's increasingly evident the operating system wars are down to three--Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux...We're happy to help all HP constituents move on in life--better you walk away from the football than have it walk away from you,” Scwartz said.

In a press conference last month, the Sun regional executive said the operating system wars were down to Sun and Microsoft.

Lionel Lim, Sun Microsystems Asia South vice president and managing director, said the company expects to dominate the computing market, claiming to have already won the war with its latest version of Solaris, a 64-bit operating system derived from Unix.

Lim stressed that this OS war will be down to the proprietary world led by Windows and the open source community under gradual capture by Solaris.

In five years, Lim said, IBM and HP will be trampled by Microsoft in the proprietary market for network OS. Meanwhile Solaris will eat into the market of Red Hat, Novell, Suse, and Mandrake, among others.