The Register: The Red Hat, IBM Pitch for Linux in the Enterprise

“Earlier this week The Register had an interesting talk over
lunch with Red Hat VP marketing Mark de Visser, covering a fair
range of topics, including how Redmond finally gets it, what takes
its place (no, not Red Hat, we agreed on that) and the two Next Big
Things for Red Hat–the Red Hat Desktop, and the Advanced Server
deal with IBM. There’s a certain amount of controversy associated
with both of these, but as (with the aid of the Red Hat 8 CD he
pressed into our hands) we’ll do a user’s eye view of the desktop
later, we’ll concentrate on the Advanced Server strategy here.

“Red Hat has been involved with IBM for some considerable time,
IBM has been talking the Linux talk for some considerable time, but
it is the perception of The Register (which in its turn, has been
hanging around IBM for a not inconsiderable time) that much smoke
and little light has emanated from the Blue Behemoth. IBM can be a
great place to hunt around for Linux information and support, and
it clearly has numerous happy techies messing around with the
stuff, but how easily can you actually buy Linux machines from IBM?
Sure, you can get them if you specifically ask for them, but the
sales operation tends not to evangelise them…”

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