An open agenda
- Article 12 of 16
- LinuxUser & Developer, April 2006
Unisys thinks it's the ideal company to sell open source to the enterprise. Rob Buckley talks to its head of enterprise Linux to find out why
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But we’ve tried to put together a stack that is also a combination of open source and closed source products so that customers have an easy route into a more open environment. If they’ve made major investment in products like Oracle and it still makes sense to continue with that then they should do so, but they should at least do it on a Linux platform in a more open environment. Then we can see which areas of open source make more sense in the future.
So we can put together a hybrid stack for them then certify the whole stack and give them level 1, level 2 and level 3 support. It increases the confidence of customers so they can make that first step into open source. They can retain the things they’re used to, but just put it on a Linux platform and use it as an opportunity to evaluate other open source areas around it.
Are you continuing to contribute to open source projects?
We’ve worked with a number of the ISV packages including MySQL and PostgresQL and we’ve put them in through the engineering side to help them remove any bottlenecks in their code. We’re active with the Xen group for virtualisation, we’re a member of the JBoss Consortium. We basically offer free advice, guidance and engineering effort to grow the whole market. That shows the maturity of our company that we’ve made that change away from developing stuff for ourselves.
We’re also trying to understand what we can do for our customers as well, to help them to put together services and to get competitive advantage for commercial organisations.
What do you hope to get out of your work?
As well as something to offer customers, it shows we can contribute. We recognise that open source is a whole new way of doing things. It’s all about service rather than licence fees. It’s all about sharing and being open and that’s something that we’re stepping up to as an organisation.
It’s also something we feel we can help clients with. We’ve had experience already. We know how to make this stuff work, we believe we can pass on some of that skill and best practices to our clients. We can help them with the discussion, the decision about how to move forward and what their future should look like.
What was the initial reaction of your customers to your move to open source?
Some were surprised. Obviously, we now have an extra component we can deliver. Many are now grateful there’s someone they can go to for advice because it is a confusing area. You don’t always know you’re getting the best advice, especially where suppliers have an alternative.
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