| IBM pushes "Microsoft-free" desktops |
Aug. 08, 2008
IBM announced a partnership with Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat to sell "Microsoft-free desktops," says an eWeek story by Chris Preimesberger. The Linux software giants will work with hardware manufacturers to market custom-designed PCs preloaded with Lotus word processing and collaboration software, says the story.
The four companies will bundle distributions based on their respective Linux distros combined with IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution (see diagram below), which includes Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony, and Lotus Sametime, says the story. System integrators and other local partners around the world will be encouraged to add additional software, and then brand the systems for individual markets and vertical segments. To assist them, the partners will provide an option for "customers, ISVs and systems integrators" to use Lotus Expeditor, a service oriented architecture (SOA)-based development platform for creating "business mashups" that, like Notes and Sametime, is based on open-source Eclipse.
IBM's OCCS framework
IBM also announced a strategy called the ISV Software Appliance Initiative, designed to help ISVs deliver Linux- and Domino-based software appliances to midmarket customers, writes Preimesberger. The strategy is intended "to liberate small businesses from Microsoft's proprietary Small Business Server," IBM open-source chief Bob Sutor was quoted as saying at this week's LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco.
The story quotes Kevin Cavanaugh, VP for IBM Lotus Software, as saying, "The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux. We'll work to unlock the desktop to save our customers money and give freedom of choice."
According to Preimesberger, "IBM's front-line Linux and open-source troops were out in full force," at LinuxWorld to convince the Linux community that it is "becoming more open-source-minded in enterprise product development."
In one gesture toward open source, IBM was reported by Network World to have announced at LinuxWorld that it is open-sourcing its Linux-based supercomputing code. The HPC Open Source Software Stack, which includes IBM's Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit, is said to represent IBM's first open-source contribution for supercomputing.
A day after IBM's Suter spoke in San Francisco, he reportedly flew to the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas where he called for less mimicry of Windows in Linux UI design. As reported in BetaNews, Sutor suggested that if designers needed inspiration, they should instead look to the Apple Macintosh.
(Hey, it worked for Microsoft.)
Availability
The full eWeek story on IBM's "Microsoft-free" collation may be found here.
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