From the 'self serving study' files:

A new report out today from IDC, sponsored by Linux vendor Novell indicates that the current economic downturn is a good thing for Linux adoption.

with more than half of the IT executives surveyed planning to accelerate Linux adoption in 2009.

This is definitely something we've heard before from multiple open source and Linux vendors, but the IDC report puts some numbers to the premise.

According to IDC, in a poll of 300 IT professionals more than 72 percent reported that, "

they are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009."

The numbers on the Linux desktop are equally encouraging with some 68 percent reporting they would be looking closely at adoption.

On the deep drill down of the IDC results, it looks like the retail industry is leading in term of the potential for Linux adoption (69 percent on server and 63 percent on the desktop).

A key driver for moving to Linux according to the study is virtualization -- again no big surprise in my view. 88 percent of respondents reported that they ,"plan to evaluate, deploy or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months."