The Register: IBM maps out database sales campaign [Interview with IBM Data Management Sales VP]

"Tell me about the open source movement. You seem very close to Red Hat. Is this an important relationship?

Absolutely it is yes. Red Hat does resell DB2 for instance and it works very closely with us overall. We also do a lot of work for Red Hat customers and have many specifically designed tools to help people migrate from Red Hat and other freeware installations. For instance, a lot of the dot com companies that started up last year started their operations on Freeware but, as their database demands have grown and they need real scalability, reliability and such like, we have gone in and upgraded them to DB2. Kelkoo is a prime example of this. It found itself reaching the limit of its freeware database and switched to DB2 and there are plenty of companies doing that.

So do you sell many DB2 installations on Linux?

We certainly do yes. We see an awful lot of interest in Linux across all sizes of business. In China for example I would say that at least 50% of our DB2 installations are on Linux. In Europe I could not name one major manufacturer that does not have a Linux project or live installation. Linux is huge. To be honest though, it's not quite so popular in the US. I don't know why. But for some reason the US seems to be more reluctant to go with Linux. Perhaps this is because Sun is so big or Microsoft so popular, or perhaps because Linux came out of Europe, but I don't see the same level of take-up of Linux in the US."

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