Linux reaches the SME sector with a little help from its friends

LinuxVAR.net is an online portal website geared to explaining the benefits of Linux and open source based solutions in terms business people can understand. Using blogs, articles, clubs and forums it acts as a catalyst to network business people with IT people and challenges to solution providers with the skills to assist them.

Linux is increasingly featuring as an operating system in both large and small companies alike. However, with many small and mid-size resellers lacking Linux skills, it is essential businesses with a desire or interest in utilising Linux be put in contact with resellers that have the Linux skills required. There are Linux sites that focus on the technical issues and use geek-speak but few that explain the issues in everyday language that business people can understand, LinuxVAR is aiming to fill that gap.

Launched a year ago, LinuxVAR.co.uk proved to be a popular site for people to visit for the latest information on Linux and to find skilled local solution providers. Recruiting over 80 VAR's to the site in the past 18 months and gaining support from leading Linux vendors such as Red Hat and Novell. The site has now been re-written and broadened with far more scope for interactivity as well as becoming pan-European in coverage over the coming year, hence the re-launch as LinuxVAR.net.

Michael Trup, Managing Director of site sponsors Interactive Ideas, the UK's largest Linux distributor, commented, "It is not good enough nowadays for solution providers to think, 'well nobody got fired for choosing Microsoft.' Linux is being used in mission critical applications in some of the biggest companies in the world. It is also now sufficiently user friendly to be used in some of the smallest environments. Linux and open source is not the solution to every problem but companies should at least be actively considering it. It they choose something else then they should know why. LinuxVAR.net aims to give them the information to make an informed decision."