The economic impact of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: How IT professionals benefit

Earlier this year, we announced a new study from IDC and sponsored by Red Hat that analyzed the contributions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to the global business economy. Since then, we’ve been using the commissioned study to break down how Red Hat Enterprise Linux presents exciting opportunities for partners, how we’ve helped deliver $7b in customer savings and, today, how Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps fuel the growing role of IT professionals.  

The changing landscape

It’s not overstated to say that the IT landscape completely changed with the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, more than a decade and a half ago. For 2019, IDC estimated a global business revenue of $188 trillion. Of this, they estimate that at least 40% is touched by software, leaving the IT footprint to be an estimated $81 trillion. Yes, you read that right, $81 trillion. As all of this software forming the global business IT footprint has to run on an operating system, IDC estimates that over 50% is running on Linux, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux accounting for 25% of that. 

That’s a lot of big numbers but what does it all mean? It means that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has changed the experience of many IT professionals around the globe. In a software-centric world, ongoing we have seen higher demand in support and IT services which in turn further helps fuel the global IT ecosystem. 

When IDC asked IT organizations how Red Hat Enterprise Linux benefitted them, they discovered a 12% savings in IT staff productivity. This means that IT professionals spend less time managing servers, doing routine IT tasks, resolving support calls, deploying new business apps and upgrading mission-critical apps. But that’s not all. 

An employment engine

Beyond improving productivity, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem is an employment engine in itself. Including Red Hat employees, the ecosystem employs almost 900,000 workers worldwide and is expected to add nearly 250,000 more by the end of 2023, according to the IDC research. From hardware and software to services and channel companies, most of these new jobs will be high-skill and high-paying.

Expanding further, ecosystem employees have partners within their customers - the IT professionals who work with the software, hardware and services stacked on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to the research, IDC estimates this community of Red Hat Enterprise Linux focused IT professionals at 2.1 million by the end of 2023. When we combine the ecosystem employment with IT professionals working for Red Hat Enterprise Linux clients, it’s possible that more than 3.3 million people could work in Red Hat-related positions by 2023. 

We’ve now learned how Red Hat Enterprise Linux impacts partners, customers and IT professionals but stay tuned for the next post in our series that will highlight how it affects local economies and more.