IBM.com: Transcript of Sam Palmisano remarks at LinuxWorld 2001

[ Thanks to Henrik
Carling for this link. ]

“I want you to know that IBM is incredibly excited about what
Linux represents and what we think we can do with the community
together. There’s no doubt in our minds that Linux is certainly a
disruptive technology that has the potential to change the game in
information technology — forever.”

“Linux will do for software what the Internet did for networks.
Linux is all about application connectivity. And this is why we say
Linux is for real and Linux is ready for real business.”

“…I spend much of my time talking and listening to a wide
variety of customers from around the world. These customers are
beyond the tire-kicking stage. Linux has clearly moved beyond the
days of experimentation. It’s crossing that all important chasm
from that world of academia and scientific computing to a full
fledged, powerful and increasingly robust operating system that
plays a pivotal role in the commercial world of e-business systems.
We’re moving very, very rapidly and we believe that the year 2001
will be the year that Linux grows up in the enterprise.”

“This world will require established standards. And this is
where Linux comes into play. Like the Internet, Linux is a standard
around which the IT world has come together and can collaborate to
solve difficult problems.”

“With the whole Open Source community and thousands and
thousands of the best programmers in the world writing modular and
elegant code — Linux is already as near to a commonly accepted,
open industry standard as you can get. IBM spends $5 billion a year
on research and development. We can’t match this and have an
acceptable return for our shareholders. We put a billion dollars
behind Linux across R&D, sales, services and support this year.
That’s nothing compared to what the community will be doing — with
the army of people — in developing this system into the
future.”

“…IBM’s decision to embrace Linux was based on a number of key
factors including customer input, our own technical validation, the
excitement we felt from our own development community, and the
opportunity to establish standards that would make e-business
really take off. Since we made this decision, we’ve enabled all
of our server platforms, our storage platforms, our software, our
middleware, everything around Linux. More and more it’s becoming
the reference platform for all of IBM development. It’s not there
yet, but it will be.”

Complete
Story