Linux bears Ideal fruit

It's been more than a year of 100-hour work weeks, but Linux is about to bear fruit for college buddies-turned-business-partners Jordan Jacobs and Doug Hock. The duo's start-up just received a $100,000 contract from the U.S. Army, the first six-figure success for Ideal Technologies, a local company that has staked its future on the Linux operating system.

"It's a much superior product compared to Microsoft and is perfect for small to medium-size businesses," explains Jacobs of Linux.

Certainly, the price is right: Linux is free.

Unlike Microsoft's popular portal, the computer code behind Linux is open for easy inspection, revision or problem solving. Because this "open source" code is free and runs on many computer platforms, including PCs, Macintoshes and Amigas, Linux has become extremely popular over the last few years, competing successfully with proprietary systems such as Windows.

Today, open-source servers power more than 50 percent of the Web servers on the Internet.

Even so, Ideal Technologies had to rethink its Linux-oriented business strategy.

When launched in May of 1999 by Jacobs and Hock, Ideal already was focused on the then-barely known operating system. "We kept hearing about Linux," says Jacobs, "then I remember reading where Bill Gates had said something about Linux `encroaching on our market share.' " The pair figured they must be onto something. Both quit their jobs with Lockheed Martin in Texas and moved back to Orlando.

They intended to create Linux-based computer networks. And that has been successful.

But since shifting the company's emphasis to training and software development in late 1999, rather than networks, sales have tripled. Explains Jacobs, "Even though the software is basically free, people still need someone to come in and do all the geeky stuff with networks and integration."

Now with $2 million-$3 million revenue projections for next year, the company plans to add between 10 and 15 new people to its full-time staff of five. The U.S. Army contract, for example, will involve a year's worth of training, installation and software development. And equally big customers are sitting up and taking note: Ideal now has an instructor in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., working with computer giant IBM on Linux systems. "We read about IBM's commitment to Linux before we started the company," smiles Jacobs. "Now they're coming to us."