“At age 28, Boas Betzler is known at IBM as the ‘grandfather’ of
Linux on the mainframe. In mid-1998, he began a port of Linux to
the IBM zSeries, and he’s shepherded the Linux mainframe project
from the beginning to the first shipments.“In porting Linux to an IBM mainframe, Betzler went against the
grain both internally at IBM, where many saw Linux as a competitor
to IBM’s own mainframe operating system, and among many analysts
outside of IBM, who suggested the port wasn’t possible without a
huge investment.“Betzler’s ‘fun’ project has helped IBM record double-digit
revenue growth for the first time in more than a decade, ‘driven in
significant part by Linux on the mainframe and its ability to
consolidate literally hundreds of Sun and HP servers for customers
seeking savings on energy, floor space and management costs,’
according to IBM’s PR team. In the fourth quarter of 2001, 11
percent of the mainframe computing capacity shipped by IBM was
slated for Linux applications…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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