“Although today’s announcement takes one modest step in stating
Hewlett-Packard’s general position on Linux, the company’s overall
strategy still remains diffuse and less than exciting in vision,
coherence and platform differentiation.”
“HP has been somewhat disorganized in its earlier attempts to
articulate its position, as fragments of Linux and open-source
projects–for example, print servers, E-Speak and Linux for
PA-RISC–have appeared in numerous parts of the company, with no
unifying management or central focus.”
“The most compelling part of HP’s strategy is the willingness to
move most of its systems software–OpenView and MC/ServiceGuard–to
Linux. HP also emphasizes its starring role in a Linux software
developers’ kit for IA64.”
However, HP stops short of declaring Linux an all-platform
strategy, as IBM has. Rather, HP takes a position closer to the
strategy taken by Sun Microsystems: develop on Linux but deploy on
Unix for the enterprise.”