Scope and Timing of Deployment: Moderators of Organizational Adoption of the Linux Server Platform.

 Market selection of product compatibility standards has long been explained through aggregate positive-feedback theoretical models of economic utility. Explaining aggregate patterns of organizational standards adoption requires two additional steps — not only differences between organizations, but also differences within organizations.Here we present a qualitative study of how organizations do (or do not) adopt a new computer server platform standard, namely Linux using PC-compatible hardware. While discussions of Linux typically focus on its open source origins, our respondents were primarily interested in low price. Despite this relative advantage in price, incumbent standards enjoyed other advantages identified by prior theory, namely network effects and switching costs.We show when, how and why such incumbent advantages are overcome by a new standard. We find that Linux adoption within organizations began for uses with a comparatively limited scope of deployment, thus minimizing network effect and switching costs disadvantages. We identify four attributes of information systems that potentially limit the scope of deployment: few links of the system to organizational processes, special-purpose computer systems, new uses and replacement of obsolete systems. We also identify an organizational level variable — internal standardization — which increases scope of deployment and thus the attractiveness of the incumbent standard.