Has Cisco Found the Next Generation of Linux Developers?

Written by The VAR Guy 1
May 18, 2009

Conventional wisdom says Linux application developers are most cozy with distribution specialists like Red Hat, Novell and Canonical. But the folks at Cisco Systems seem to be getting tighter with the Linux developer community, thanks to the so-called AXP (Application eXtension Platform) developer contest. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

cisco-linux-penguin-army Conventional wisdom says Linux application developers are most cozy with distribution specialists like Red Hat, Novell and Canonical. But the folks at Cisco Systems seem to be getting tighter with the Linux developer community, thanks to the so-called AXP (Application eXtension Platform) developer contest. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Our resident blogger has been tracking the AXP “Think Inside the Box” contest since November 2008. AXP is a Linux-based application development platform for Cisco’s Integrated Services Routers (ISRs). AXP is particularly critical to the unified communications showdown between Cisco and Microsoft. While Microsoft maintains a Windows-centric view of unified communications, Cisco is promoting network-centric applications development.

Toward that end, Cisco launched the AXP contest to attract more developers to its unified communications and unified computing efforts. The results appear promising: Cisco received roughly 900 AXP contest applications from 75 different countries, according to a company spokeswoman. Now, Cisco has announced the 10 AXP developer finalists from Phase 1 of the contest. Those finalists now move into Phase 2 of the contest.

Chipping Away At Windows?

The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that the AXP contest will topple Microsoft’s massive channel of independent software vendors (ISVs). But the growth of Linux-centric server applications and network-centric applications is undeniable.

A few examples:

Roughly 40,000 professionals are now certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Novell has introduced new Mono code that allows SUSE Linux to run Microsoft .Net applications.
Cisco’s AXP contest coupled with the Application-Oriented Networking (AON) push paves the way for more network-centric services.

But is Cisco really succeeding in its efforts to recruit Linux developers to AXP? The VAR Guy will poke around a bit during the Cisco Partner Summit 2009, starting June 2 in Boston.

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