internetnews.com: LinuxWorld: It’s All About Customers

“In 2003, distributions and the kernel no longer take center
stage at the LinuxWorld Expo New York. These days, as Linux
continues to gain traction in the enterprise, the show is more
about how vendors can help customers leverage the platform to
streamline infrastructure requirements and lower total cost of
ownership.

“Perhaps nothing illustrates that point better than the show’s
upper-tier sponsors. Red Hat was the sole distribution vendor to
take a ‘platinum’ level sponsorship (and while Red Hat introduced
v8.0 of its Linux distribution in September, it’s the Advanced
Server enterprise platform, not its distribution, that helped bring
the company to profitability). The show’s ‘cornerstone’ sponsor was
Hewlett-Packard, with AMD, IBM , Intel, Sun Microsystems, and
Veritas rounding out the ‘platinum’ sponsorships. The only other
distribution on the marquee was UnitedLinux, with a ‘silver’
sponsorship…”

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