In August, 2016, Microsoft announced transferring a powerful developing tool – Powershell to the systems like Linux. This is not the first time Microsoft leaning on Linux. In the beginning of this year, Microsoft published SQL Server for Linux. In March, Microsoft announced that it will publish database management software – Linux SQL Server. Just as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said, ‘Microsoft loves Linux.’
Why Linux?
Nowadays, the servers of world well-known websites like Google, Facebook, Wikipedia are all constructed using Linux. Linux is useful for its 4 advantages: high- efficiency, high stability, security, and high cost performance.
1. High efficiency mainly shows in parallel calculation, which allows multiple programs run simultaneously, requiring less utilization of hardware than Windows.
2. Large-scale application deployed on Linux doesn’t need a restart for months, Linux is way better than Windows on stability.
3. Linux is more secure shows in security technology like access control to read and write, audit tracking, core authorization. Bugs can be found soon due to its open source mechanism.
4. Linux is open source and free, despite there are some manufacturers charge by providing commercial edition and technical support. In general, Linux has better cost performance.
Just because the advantages mentioned above, Linux is occupying more and more market.
SuperMap’s Choice
B/S (Brower/Server) has become the new trend for software mode. Choosing B/S mode requires transferring GIS functionalities on PC terminal to server terminal. The operation system on PC terminal is monopolied by Windows. But the server terminal market is divided by Windows, Unix, Linux. In this situation, GIS only supporting Windows is not clearly sufficient, supporting cross-platform is urgent.
Cloud calculation also needs cross-platform technology. There are cloud technologies based on Windows, like Microsoft Azure and Amazon web services. But there are more cloud calculation platforms based on Unix or Linux, like IBM, Red Hat, and Google. Therefore, in the construction of cloud calculation, the GIS platform has to support multiple operation systems.
Since 2001, SuperMap officially initialized cross-platform technology plan, which is based on standard C++ to reconstruct GIS functionality core, to rewrite all the GIS platform codes. This plan costs a lot but has the best cost performance. Since the initialization of the plan in 2001, the first version C++ core has been released in 2005. After more than 10 years’ efforts, SuperMap now has a full package of cross-platform SuperMap GIS series, not only supporting Windows, but also supporting operations systems like Linux and Unix, providing GIS platform support for high-end users and large-scale calculation users.
Bright Future with Cross-platform GIS Technology
Currently, cross-platform has been one of biggest advantages for SuperMap GIS software. Cross-platform SuperMap GIS software series have been supported by numerous Linux and Unix users. Nowadays, not Supermap GIS desktop supports cross-platform, but also in application like SuperMap statistics GIS system, hydrology ‘one map’ system, meteorological service platform, and environmental protection ‘one map’ systems are constructed based on Linux system, which are secure and stable.
In 2015, there are more than 20% of SuperMap iServer Series are on Linux system, and this number is still increasing. We can forecast more and more industrial GIS server will transfer from Windows servers to Linux servers, some of customers will also choose Unix server. In cloud GIS application, there will be more substitutes.
