“Why is Dell doing this? Simple. It’s where the money
is. Dell’s senior VP of the Enterprise Systems Group, Michael
Lambert, explains that Dell is already the No. 2 provider of
servers, behind market leader Compaq, and that 9 percent of all
Dell servers are now going out the door with Linux.”
“Dell believes that Linux’s growing trend is only going to
continue upward. Lambert says that between now and 2003, more than
$370 billion will be spent on filling out the Internet
infrastructure. Dell and Red Hat want to make sure that they get
their piece of the expanding pie.”
“That isn’t just pie in the sky. The pair also announced that
they will ship more than 1,400 Dell PowerApp.web 100 appliance
servers to every Toyota and Lexus dealer in the country that has
Red Hat Linux 6.2 and Apache Web server installed. Incidentally,
the deal was not driven by Dell or Red Hat, but instead came from a
direct request from Toyota for this kind of package. As Lambert
says, “Our Linux growth is being customer-driven.”