“So IBM can’t catch a break. Although its e-business campaign
did wonders for the company’s services business (and certainly
helped its hardware and software efforts as well), IBM now faces an
even more difficult battle to capture developer mindshare.”
“It must fight a more powerful Solaris, as well as NT, if it is
to get applications developed specifically for IBM platforms. And
even if it can persuade developers to do so, this will not address
IBM’s overarching desire for a common development environment that
spans all IBM servers.”
“Enter Linux, an operating system and development platform that
could do even more for IBM than 100 percent pure Java was supposed
to do, and do it more reliably….”
“So Linux could give IBM even more advantages than Java ever
could have done. But to capitalize on this potential, IBM must
position itself to win from Linux’s success. The company is
certainly trying to do so.”
“It is speaking out at least as aggressively in favor of Linux
as is any major systems vendor, has launched the most comprehensive
Linux services program, is actively porting its middleware and
applications to the OS, and is contributing software to the Linux
community. IBM is now in the process of ensuring that Linux will
run on, and fully integrate with, each of its server
platforms….”