“Mark Cathcart, a technology strategist with IBM and a
member of the S/390 Software Development Council, talks about IBM?s
strategy behind Linux on the z900 and whether Linux can really take
this age-old platform into the world of open-systems. While
Linux may be the z900s salvation, the Unix cousin is far from IBM’s
first foray into open standards. Offering Linux on the platform is
an extension of something that started almost 10 years ago.”
“searchEnterpriseLinux: So why would shops want
to run Linux on their mainframe?
Cathcart: [With Unix applications],we found
that most software vendors weren’t willing to make major
alterations to their applications. But it’s much easier with Linux.
It?s like a duck to water. You get nothing more or less but just
Linux running on S/390 hardware. The lure of Linux is the speed
applications can be deployed. We could never deploy them fast
enough for zOS.”