Big penguin blues
- Article 4 of 16
- LinuxUser & Developer, December 2004
IBM's love-affair with Linux has entered a more mature phase, says Rob Buckley. Rather than adopt the mantle of revolutionary, IBM is using its sober, business-oriented company persona to get Linux into organisations.
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It won’t be until SCO is “banged to rights” that IBM once again feels safe enough to put its enthusiasm behind Linux as it did in 2000. Until then, it will continue with long-term, slow-moving strategies that befit a long-term, slow-moving company. But who knows? They may even work better.
Strategy talks
Adam Jollans is worldwide Linux software strategy manager for IBM. He spoke to LinuxUser & Developer in November about IBM’s attitude to Linux and its plans for the OS.
Has the SCO action affected IBM’s Linux enthusiasm?
The net answer is no. In terms of investment in Linux, that has increased and continues to increase. In terms of the Linux tech centre, it was 250 people, now it’s 600 people. I was looking yesterday at when [Lou] Gerstner said 1,500 people were working on Linux at IBM. It’s now 8,000 people working on Linux.
Lou Gerstner pledged a $1 billion Linux investment. Is there a comparable figure now?
In 2003 we made $2 billion in revenue around Linux. Our Linux business has moved on from being an emerging business opportunity to a mainstream business. IBM was a $90 billion company last year, so this is a significant part.
You focus on two main Linux distributions, Red Hat and SuSE, both of which carry high licensing costs. Do you work with any distributions that don’t carry those licensing costs?
We’ve got customers using Debian, Fedora, and so on. But if you run mission-critical apps on Linux, you want service-level agreements with four-hour response times or better because you’re betting your business on Linux. For other customers, it depends on how they want to be supported. Sometimes, in education and government, customers say they will do their own support, in which case that will reduce the cost of licensing.
IBM cites Linux’s portability as one of its main attractions, yet you’re now pushing Linux on Power when you’re more or less the only company using Power chips in servers. How do you square those two things?
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