Merrill Lynch is one of many Wall Street brokerages doing a large-scale Linux deployment in an effort to cut their costs and boost revenue.
Merrill's plans, and others like it, are very significant because they are the first companywide - rather than departmental - Linux implementations. While not without risk, this lends an enormous amount of credence to the argument that Linux can be used in place of more established technologies like Unix and Windows.
Merrill and others talked about their Linux plans at an event hosted by Red Hat Software in New York Tuesday night.
"Initially it was about cost savings but it has been a benefit to the business because we're profiting from being more flexible," says Steve Yatko, chief technology officer of securities IT at CSFB. "Our trading volume has increased [twenty-fold], and our customers are seeing better pricing. And things that used to take days [like installing applications and doing management tasks] now take minutes."
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