Computer Associates has this week announced that it is to follow the growing band of vendors on the Linux bandwagon and develop its management framework for the hugely popular free-source operating system.

CA intends to port its popular Unicenter TNG framework across to Linux, but somewhat surprisingly it has chosen not to follow the usual suspects, namely Red Hat, and will instead go with the offering from Caldera, a solution that is gradually catching the Red Hat version of the O/S.

Naturally, Computer Associates had to do this. If one of the worlds largest software companies had failed to port to Linux things would have looked somewhat awry. And to an extent it should prove to a fairly useful addition to its portfolio. Increasingly firms are building to the web with Linux as a base and if the firm is large enough to warrant a systems management suite, then Linux support will be essential.

Perhaps more importantly though, CA joining the throng of Linux supporters throws a huge amount of weight behind Linux and further validates it as the Operating System to challenge the rest (NT).