I.B.M. to Encourage Linux Programs for Small Business, Dec 17, 2001

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The latest step by IBM to build support behind its iSeries servers for the small business market, the new Linux Test Drive program will let software developers test Linux applications online.

``If you're an ISV (independent software vendor), it gives you a way to kick the tires and see how Linux and the iSeries is,'' IBM spokesman Tim Dallman said. ``It's all about trying to foster and stimulate the development of Linux applications for small and medium businesses.''

IBM is to spend $100m on developing the Linux market in India as part of the $1bn investment it previously announced in the open source platform.

Building on Red Hat's early support of the xSeries platform, the Linux distribution partner today announced its support for the IBM eServer zSeries, iSeries and pSeries platforms.

A group of developers in one of IBM's German Labs decided to run Linux under VM, provoked by a member of the Linux community who wanted to see Linux run everywhere.

By October of this year IBM claimed to have shipped its 1000th zSeries machine in about 9 or 10 months, mostly with the help of Linux

IBM's view of Linux is smart. The 'development agenda' is set around new markets that IBM is eager to move into. For instance, Frye says that the majority of new web applications and e-commerce sites run on Linux. In this particular instance, IBM stands to gain substantially by the increased sales of its WebSphere application server product and DB2 database. By fine tuning the operating system and stimulating community development, IBM can confidently offer Linux as the third prong in a WebSphere, DB2 solution.

International Business Machines Corp. said on Tuesday that it has begun selling groups of server computers with system management software and the Linux operating system in a move that the computer giant says will expand the use of Linux.

IBM says it has begun selling groups of server computers with system management software and the Linux operating system in a move the computer giant says will expand the use of Linux.

International Business Machines is putting its money where its mouth is on the open source movement by donating $40 million worth of Java-based software to the open source community.

If IBM gets its way, users will soon be thinking about operating systems the way investors view pork bellies: as mere commodities. The instrument the company will use to make this sea change in IT? Linux.

In an attempt to tackle the small and medium-sized business market, IBM will announce next week that its WebSphere Commerce middleware now supports Linux on Intel-based systems.

IBM used its long-awaited Regatta Unix server launch to trumpet its claim to the best price-performance high-end Unix server, and score points against Sun and Hewlett-Packard. As well as the much-leaked p690 Regatta server, the event also contained hints as to the future of AIX and a preview of what is next for IBM's Intel server range.

IBM widened its lead in a drastically shrinking server market during the second quarter, gaining against once-feared Sun Microsystems and the possible duo of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer. IBM server revenue increased from $3 billion to $3.2 billion, a 5.3 percent rise from the second quarter of 2000. Big Blue now controls more than a quarter of the total market, according to market researcher IDC. The growth is evidence of the success of its efforts begun in 1999 to recover from Sun's gains.

As Linux becomes a viable platform for business applications, one key question for finance executives is whether a system praised for being free will exact a high price in the form of service and support. Computer geeks may be thrilled by the communal spirit of collaboration in the Linux world, but once a company has placed a crucial application, such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), on the Linux platform, decisions about how or whether to acquire adequate service and technical support become an important element of corporate risk management.

IBM Corp. plans to announce Tuesday that the electronic trading service that supplies brokers with data from the New York and American stock exchanges is shifting its key applications to Linux.

Sendmail will launch its Sendmail message transfer product line on the IBM zSeries mainframe at LinuxWorld this week, converting the venerable mainframe into the world's largest mail server.

"This will be a highly scalable system. We can support over 2 million users" on a mainframe, said Wiley Hodges, Sendmail's product manager.

With solid year-to-year growth and a broad potential market that is currently using or experimenting with it, the open-source Linux platform is gaining ground in the information technology (IT) budgets of companies worldwide, analysts at IDC said Tuesday.

IBM is investing a huge amount of money and talent -- a reported $1 billion this year, including the efforts of hundreds of employees -- into Linux, as the software is more generally known. And, as was evident at the San Francisco conference, IBM executives are roaming the globe to boost a technology their company doesn't own and can't possibly control.

Their fervent salesmanship contrasts, to put it mildly, with Microsoft's shrill denunciations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) model under which Linux is licensed to users. Microsoft calls this licensing system -- and Linux by implication -- a threat to our very system of capitalism.

IBM today used its Solutions technical developers conference here to announce a range of new and updated developer tools.

The list included WebSphere Studio Version 4, its first commercially available set of Web services and JavaServer Pages development tools that enable software developers to create Web-based applications and extend their existing applications to the Web with minimal knowledge of Java, XML or SOAP.

We think grid is really going to be a very, very big thing," said Dave Turek, IBM's vice president for Linux emerging technologies.

The ultimate goal behind computing grids is to create clusters of servers connected to one another so that users can tap into the grid and get the computing power they need when they need it.

Grids allow communities of researchers to securely tap computing power on demand and to share resources that might otherwise be difficult to pull together, Turek said.

IBM is now offering a free service, the Linux Community Development System (LCDS), that lets Linux developers access Linux running on an S/390 mainframe over the Internet and, therefore, provides the open-source community with a stable high-end platform to develop, port or test its applications. What's in it for IBM? Short-term, very little return on investment, except a bit of goodwill and community contribution. But long-term, IBM will gain significant ROI in the way of mindshare that IBM's Big Iron and Linux belong together, along with a long list of open-source apps that execute on the mainframe and outperform those on most other platforms.

While Microsoft shuffles uneasily and talks down the advantages of open source, IBM has been embracing Linux with enthusiasm. Who would ever have thought that the old AS/400, one of the most proprietary systems ever sold, would one day run an open source operating system? Yet, support for Linux is serving IBM very well.

IBM has been backing a Linux push on all four of its server lines, though the company has been making the most noise on its xSeries Intel server line, where Linux first took root within Big Blue, and its powerful zSeries mainframe line. IBM will push Linux for its iSeries line with a scaled-down version of the argument used for mainframes: Several copies of Linux can run on a single iSeries server, letting customers consolidate jobs currently running on several computers.

Korean Air has installed Linux software on an IBM mainframe to run its scheduling and accounting jobs, the companies said Monday. For scheduling, a z900 mainframe is being used to coordinate the work of 3,000 pilots and flight attendants for the airline's 111 planes. And Korean Air has begun moving the software for its daily revenue accounting system to Linux on the mainframe.

In recent weeks, Microsoft executives have launched an all-out propaganda war against open source software, based on the GNU Public Licence (GPL). Open source allows free access to the programming code that makes up operating systems and applications, but also requires that any source code modifications also be made available.

Microsoft's comments have branded this way of working anti-American and destructive to intellectual property, but IBM, which has recently become an outspoken proponent of open source, says Microsoft is swimming against the tide.

As far as IBM is concerned Linux has become mainstream and it is doing mainstream business. It is selling Linux ready Intel-based hardware into major corporate sites. Big adopters include Shell, Deutche Bank and Morgan Stanley.

IBM is participating in two Japanese initiatives to improve Linux, projects that illustrate the peculiar nature of the development of the operating system. The first is a joint project among Big Blue and Japanese server leaders NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi to improve Linux for big businesses. The second project, separate but with similar goals, is a new Japanese branch of the Open-Source Development Lab (OSDL), where programmers can test their software on expensive high-end systems

IBM, a key backer of the Linux operating system, has sold a Linux supercomputer to WesternGeco for oil exploration after similar sales to Chevron and Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Terms of the sale to U.K.-based WesternGeco, an exploration-services company, weren't disclosed. The supercomputer, which already is installed, is made up of 256 server computers, each containing two Intel processors. The system runs software that converts seismic soundings to digital maps so WesternGeco clients can distinguish oil fields from other underground formations

IBM will announce late in the week that it has made one of its 10-processor zSeries mainframe computers available via the Internet for access by people interested in working with the Linux operating system. The mainframe has been set up to give people "virtual servers," allowing them to log in, explore Linux features and test heavy-duty applications designed to run on Linux.

The first quarter was a rocky one for Unix servers, as the U.S. market shrunk by about 2 percent because of a slowing economy, according to a survey by market researcher Dataquest.

Because the Linux operating system is a derivative of Unix and doesn't sell enough units to demand its own category, Dataquest lumped it in with Unix for this market-share survey. Dell doesn't offer any Unix-based servers

IBM is launching the latest initiative to bring Linux into set-top boxes, working with MontaVista Software to bring its Hard Hat Linux to the PowerPC-based, single-chip Set-Top Box Controller

A 20-year-old Chicago man today admitted spray painting IBM Corp. advertising symbols on a Lincoln Park sidewalk and was sentenced to a year of supervision and 30 hours of community service.

Additionally, IBM said today it has paid the city more than $18,000 to cover the cost of removing the "peace, love and Linux" ads from 105 sidewalks in the Lincoln Park, Hyde Park, Wicker Park and Lakeview neighborhoods.

IBM Wednesday said that that its PowerPC-based set-top box controllers will support Linux and outlined its next generation of set-top silicon.

Specifically, the company said it will work with MontaVista Software, Inc. to make that company's Hard Hat Linux operating system compatible with its set-top box controller. The company said one European vendor, Netgem, already has plans to develop a new software platform using IBM's controllers and Linux.

Linux has finally made it onto the business map in the area of database benchmarks, helping take the wind out of Microsoft's continued contention that open-source operating systems don't make good business sense.

The bank, one of Venezuela's largest, will move tasks currently running on 30 Windows NT servers onto a mainframe running Linux, IBM said. Customers checking account information over the Internet also will be using the mainframe's services.

In a second phase, the bank will move functions currently running on Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems Unix servers to the mainframe.

Big Blue IBM has teamed up with Red Hat to deliver Linux services to SMEs, in a partnership announced today.

The deal will allow value added resellers to sell IBM's eServer xSeries platform, pre-configured with Red Hat Linux.

[Chicago] City officials are considering fining IBM for painting peace symbols, hearts and penguins on sidewalks as part of a promotion for the company's Linux computer operating system.

IBM on Tuesday laid out plans for acquiring the database business of Informix for $1 billion in cash. After the deal closes in the third quarter, Big Blue will partner with Ascential Software, Informix's remaining subsidiary, by marketing Ascential's database management tools and co-developing some products, officials said in a teleconference

IBM last week announced that $200 million would be invested on Linux-related development work in Asia Pacific, most of which would go to China and Japan where the need to "localize" the open source operating system is utmost, according to officials.

IBM today announced the availability of AIX 5L Version 5.1, the next version of its Unix operating system that allows users to manage and build both Unix and Linux applications.

The new product, which will be generally available on May 4, includes application programming interfaces and header files that allow popular Linux applications to run on AIX with a simple recompilation.

IBM has been touting its flavor of Linux for servers with what can only be described as graffiti, by stenciling peace-signs, hearts and penguins (symbolizing peace, love and Linux) on San Francisco city streets, IDG.net reports.

Apparently, Big Blue failed to get permission in advance and the city is taking a dim view of the stunt. "They're in violation of a city ordinance," SF Department of Public Works public affairs director Alex Mamak is quoted as saying.

IBM is stepping up its efforts to grow the Linux market in the Asia-Pacific region following earlier plans to support demand for the open-source software. In September, the computer-services giant said it would invest more than $200 million over four years to speed up the development of Linux-based products in Asia. IBM also had planned to invest in seven Linux development and competency centers in the region, as well as hire 300 consultants, researchers and product developers.

IBM India is eyeing the Linux platform by building an entire range of systems, right from desktops to servers, which include the I and G series. The company would lead its Linux sales and marketing initiatives in the ASEAN/South Asian region from India as it sees the country as one of the largest potential growth markets for Linux in the region.

As director of IBM's Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Ore., Dan Frye, who oversees the activities of approximately 200 people, will play a large role in furthering the company's ambitions to push Linux into corporate America. He recently sat down with CNET to discuss his thoughts about the future of Linux and its potential to shake up the constellation of power in the operating systems market.

MySAP is the first large-scale enterprise app to hit the Linux platform, and observers say the move should help IBM realize two key elements of its growth strategy.

There's the Steve who dismisses the upstart platform as lacking credibility. This Steve yesterday called Linux a 'toy'. However the Steve who wants to assure analysts that Microsoft is taking its competition seriously rapidly qualified the remark. "By IBM supporting Linux well then it is not a toy," he barked.

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer says IBM Corp.'s $1 billion investment in Linux would not allow the rival operating system to win the day.

The storage move dovetails with IBM's massive commitment to having the Linux operating system on its servers. The company plans to make sure Linux works on all four of its server product lines, including its high-end mainframes. Adding Linux support for storage means IBM can sell its own storage systems for servers running Linux.

Two years ago, numerous companies thought it would be a snap to parlay the popularity of the open-source operating system into profitability. Now Linux companies are consolidating, overhauling their business plans, laying off staff, scaling back expansion plans and pushing back profitability schedules.

Despite the troubles, there are some positive signs on the horizon. Little-known Ebiz Enterprises, through its acquisitions of Linuxmall.com and Jones Business Systems, expects to have positive cash flow by June 30.

MontaVista Software, Inc., developer of the Hard Hat Linux operating system for embedded applications and IBM have announced the availability of VisualAge Micro Edition (VAME) for Hard Hat Linux by MontaVista. VAME is an integrated development environment with runtime components incorporating IBM's latest embedded Java technology, the J9 Virtual Machine.

Starting this week, a six-storey billboard in New York's Times Square will be emblazoned an image of the Linux penguin alongside peace and love symbols that give the multi-million dollar campaign a distinctly 60s feel.

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