This White Paper sizes the economic impact of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in three dimensions: the revenue and expenses that are "touched" in the enterprises that use RHEL and the economic advantage accrued, the impact of IT expenses on technology and staff labor by enterprises using RHEL, and the size and reach of the ecosystem whose products and services sit on RHEL.

This document is based on IDC research and forecasts on IT markets, internal IT models on the economic impact of IT, third-party economic data, and a global survey of 600+ line-of-business and IT executives.