IBM Corp. Wednesday moved to slough off its reputation as a stodgy, slow-moving enterprise by throwing its considerable support behind Linux. And it is evangelizing Linux’s readiness to enter the enterprise.
At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo New York 2001 Wednesday, Big Blue committed to spending $300 million on Linux services over the next three years. IBM has already committed to investing $1 billion in Linux over the next 12 months.
That $300 million will go towards Linux e-business enablement and migration services, open source consulting for the Linux environment, and Web and High Availability Cluster services. Big Blue has also pledged to enhance its services relationships through an international technical support agreement with SuSE, and by building on existing agreements with RedHat and Linuxcare.
Sam Palmisano, president and chief operating officer of IBM, drove home IBM’s commitment to Linux during his Keynote address Wednesday, saying that IBM believes Linux will become the dominant operating system on Web servers in the next few years.
“This is certainly a disruptive technology that we’re all going to be working with for a long time,” Palmisano said.
He said Linux is the key to the grail of ubiquitous connectivity — portability across various types of systems and infrastructures — that the IT industry has been seeking for several decades and first tasted with the explosion of Internet technologies. Why? In a word: standards.
“Think of Linux as applications connectivity,” Palmisano said. And with the ability to set a standard for applications to communicate with each other, he declared, “Linux is ready for real business…The year 2001 will be the year that Linux grows up in the enterprise.”
One of the factors in Linux’s ability to drive standards adoption is its global acceptance.
“It is the first operating system that wasn’t developed in the U.S.,” Palmisano said. “This thing is accepted all over the world. The value proposition is the ability to write an application without having to worry about the plumbing.”
Recognizing the signals — IDC has predicted that Linux will hold 38 percent of the market by 2004 — Big Blue is taking Linux seriously, even though it offers its own proprietary flavor of Unix.
“More and more [Linux] is becoming the focus of all IBM development,” Palmisano said. “At IBM we have made our choice. We have voted for open source industry standards. We don’t invest $1 billion casually.”
Palmisano, who has been with IBM for 30 years, said he first became interested in Linux after accepting his present position with the company. At that point, he traveled around the world meeting with customers and the one thing everyone was talking about, he said, was Linux. Since that time, IBM has implemented Linux on its eServer z900 mainframe and has proceeded to set up Linux systems for companies like Shell Oil, Deutsche Telekom, Weather.com, even Morgan Stanley. Deutsche Telekom, a subsidiary of T Systems and one of Germany’s largest telecoms, is in the process of installing Linux on a z900 for managing its e-mail databases.
However, he said four myths have to date hampered the acceptance of Linux, and IBM is making an effort to dispel those myths. The first is that Linux can’t scale. While he conceded that may have been true a year ago, Palmisano said that argument no longer holds water. Referencing the z900, he simply asked, “What is larger than a supercomputer?”
The second myth is that Linux is only a niche player. But, he said, Web server vendors, ISPs, telcos and Internet application providers are all utilizing Linux. That, he estimated is 40 percent of the industry. “I guess 40 percent is a niche,” he quipped. “That’s even big enough for IBM to play in.”
The third myth, he said, is that Linux is not ready for mission-critical production environments. He dispelled that argument by referring to Morgan St
anley, which is in the process of moving from Unix server farms to Linux.
He said the final myth was drawn from an unnamed vendor who derisively called Linux the bathtub of code. The vendor said source code is just floating in the bathtub and vendors can simply take anything out of it they wish and call it Linux.
But Palmisano argued that its open source nature is Linux’s strength, not its weakness.
“Communities working together can produce exciting, wonderful, quality work,” he said. “IBM spends $5 billion in research and development a year. We can’t match this,” he said opening his arms to embrace the audience. “We’re going to have to unleash the creativity of thousands of people around the world.”
In addition to its $300 million investment in Linux services, which will help customers install and implement commercial Linux e-business solutions, the company also revealed plans for the IBM eServer x430, a 64-way server that will run the new Linux Application Environment.
“In my experience, service and support are among the key drivers that will help make customers comfortable with running Linux in commercial business environments,” said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s vice president of system software research. “By providing superior services and support, IBM is clearly helping Linux move into the mainstream from its current position as the platform for technical, academic and service provider applications.”
Big Blue also unveiled Linux-based network processor software development tools and services for ISPs and networking equipment vendors, including:
- Domino Workflow on Linux — software which enables customers to build, modify and improve business processes like employee hiring and CRM by streamlining and automating interactions
- Plans to expand Linux support for Tivoli Systems management software
- IBM Director for advanced systems management software available on Linux for the IBM eServer xSeries product line, including a “self healing” feature to predict server failures
- Availability of the NetVista Thin Client, the N22001, running Linux
- Linux-certified IntelliStation Z Pro workstations based on Intel’s new 64-bit Itanium processor.
“In the year since IBM embraced Linux as key to the evolution of e-business, our customers have rapidly adopted Linux in real e-business solutions. Linux is now ready for real e-business,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM vice president of technology and strategy, Server Group. “Now, in addition to providing top to bottom Linux support for our hardware and software, we’re investing in Linux services so that IBM can assure our customers that the level of support they have come to expect for their enterprise computing environments will be available for Linux.”
