Turbolinux Expands Partnership with Big Blue

IBM continued its journey into the open source world Wednesday by inking a
major distribution deal with Turbolinux.

Financials of the deal were not made public.

Under the agreement, Turbolinux and IBM will jointly market and roll out
bundled IBM solutions on Turbolinux, including IBM’s DB2 Universal Database,
IBM WebSphere family of e-commerce application servers, Lotus Domino
collaboration software, Tivoli Framework and IBM’s small business suite for
Linux.

The agreement builds on a relationship between IBM and Turbolinux that began
in 1999 when the two companies first offered DB2 Universal Database with a
Linux distribution.

IBM has since taken an equity stake in Turbolinux and the two companies have partnered on global
support and services, a global OEM agreement, and agreements to offer
Turbolinux across IBM’s eServer line of business server platforms.

While IBM has done its share of business with Turbolinux, it does not depend
on the open-source software company exclusively. In a deal that paralleled
Wednesday’s pact with Turbolinux, IBM linked arms with industry leader Red
Hat Inc. in August to distribute bundled IBM, Lotus, Tivoli and Red Hat
software offerings.

Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of systems software research for IDC, said the
play should accelerate the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, particularly
in Asia where Turbolinux has a strong presence.

For Turbolinux, the agreement is a major win for as it goes head-to-head
with a host of Linux providers, including Red Hat and Caldera. Turbolinux
also filed for a public offering in October.

Once a struggling software firm last year, Turbolinux reeled in $30 million
of third-round funding from the likes of Fujitsu
Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., IBM, SGI and Softbank Ecommerce Corp. several months
after it axed 70 employees and its skipper stepped down.