“During his keynote address at the Linuxworld trade show
yesterday, IBM president and chief operating officer Sam
Palmisano said that Linux is poised to “leap the chasm between
merely being a nice modular technology for small business systems
to being an integral platform for conducting real ebusiness. To
ensure that Linux is adopted by more enterprises, IBM plans to
spend $300m over the next three years boosting its global support
services offerings for the OS. This is in addition to the $1bn
investment in new products, which the company announced last
December.”
“As part of the $300m investment, IBM plans to create services
for Linux ebusiness deployment and migration, as well as
consultancy services surrounding cluster design and implementation.
It has also expanded its services relationships through
international technical support agreements with SuSE, Red Hat and
LinuxCare.”
“Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst with researcher IDC, said that
service and support are among the key drivers that will help make
customers comfortable with running Linux in a business environment.
“By providing services and support, IBM is clearly helping Linux
move into the mainstream from its current position as the platform
for technical, academic and service provider applications,” he
said.”