IBM "Linux Overview" Audiocast

Pahroza writes " Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President, Technology & Strategy IBM Enterprise Systems Group, discusses IBM's overview of Linux. The presentation will begin on August 8th, 2000, at 11:30 am EST, and will remain viewable afterwards." It's in Real or Windows Media Player - bleah.

Comments

A summary, for those without RealPlayer

[Mtgman]

IBM has always been committed to maximum profitability for minimum costs. A supreme example of this was the AIX operating system, not only did we put very little time into developing it, we put even less time into training the customer support reps.

IBM is proud to announce our new vision for the future. We have already previewed some of this vision with the introduction of the multi-Linux s/390 configuration and the Linux watch. Keep an eye on IBM as we incorporate this free OS into more and more of our systems. What this means to investors is much higher profits as our R&D costs drop. We also expect to see a reducion in the amount of time and money we must expend on our customer support lines as we can now say "It's Linus's Fault."

Steven

Re:A summary, for those without RealPlayer

[Doug Marker]

Hi Stephen, I won't judge the basis for your remarks but some years back I worked for IBM and my job in the 1990s was to diseminate AIX & Risc technology awareness throughout IBM in the Asia Pacific region. The funding was excellent, the support was from the top, the program involved sending 2 teams twice a year to all interested Asian countries. In these teams we hired US experts (non IBM) plus we got loaned IBM Unix experts from Austin, plus we included local specialists. We did this for over 4 years and the program was a resounding success. My background in UNIX started in 1980. In 1983 was on the committee that founded the 1st official Unix usere's group outside the US. Have worked with nearly all flavours of UNIX including the infamous Microsoft developed version called XENIX. Your comments just don't match my experience of IBM's AIX commitment. It is their commitment to Linux that is what will make the biggest difference against Microsoft. Is this what your beef is really about ??? Cheers - Doug Marker

Notes on the second half, and the Q and A.

[Azog]

There's some really good stuff in here, especially in the Q and A section.

Perhaps most important part of Linux strategy:
- IBM believes Linux will do for applications what the Internet did for networking.
- providing a common set of interfaces that all application developoers can adapt that will facilitate the development of applications which can be deployed across a variety of platforms
- just like internet standards brought the internet together, Linux and linux standards are going to help develop lots of applications.
- Some of IBM's efforts around Linux apps, working with the community, using tools from IBM and the communiuty to allow a common Linux development platform to emerge.
- target is a world class application development environment.
- Since Linux interfaces can be provided on other platforms like AIX, it is a good development target.

- IBM has put together a Linux developers kit, thousands have been distributed.
- No charge for development use, includes full versions of WebSphere, DB2, Lotus Domino, Visual Age for Java, IBM Java tools, documentation, etc.
- Also a version for Japan.

More efforts around the world.
- A few weeks ago in Europe, announced a major ($200M) effort to assist application developers to port their apps to Linux.
- Development centers around europe with technical help, support, for application dev on IBM servers.
- Software and server specialists
- Once application is ported to Linux, it can be deployed on many platforms.

Community efforts
- established open source community efforts, the Linux Technology Center.
- Open source is better for everyone - customer, developer, etc.
- They have open sourced a number of things, and are planning to open source more.
- As many companies (besides IBM) open source their technology, Linux will become more popular and better.

===============

Q and A session

Q: OS priorities: AIX vs Linux, no mention of Monterey? and, if clustering becomes more sophisticated, will that eliminate the need for AIX on the high end? If Linux accelerates migration to industry standard platforms, what are the implications for IBM's business?

A: Monterey was the effort to convert AIX to 64bit for Power architechture and also IA64. That has been done.
- Responding to market demand for Linux, IBM has integrated Linux into strategy.
- regarding clustering: Clustering on Linux is very good today, good for internet applications, good for supercomputers. This gives "horizontal scalability", using many single, dual, or quad processor machines.
- Where Linux is NOT so good today, and where AIX has the advantage, is to run transaction processing applications - where data must be shared at very high speed, mission critical transactions, and high-level SMP where data must be shared. Linux doesn't do it yet, but the 2.4 kernel will be much better.
- Over time it is possible that Linux will approach the capabilities of enterprise. If so, the enterprise stuff from AIX might be migrated to Linux.
- There is a lot more to an enterprise solution than just the kernel.
- This may take several years, and that's why they are continuing their work with AIX.
- This strategy will adjust in the future as Linux progresses.

- Yes, Linux is an excellent example of the industry moving to standards.
- This started with the Internet, and now others like XML, SOAP, are other examples. Linux is part of this.
- This is important becayse it is only by embracing standards that we will be able to build the applications required by their customers. (ebusiness, etc.)
- Market is embracing standards,
- IBM is happy with this because they make their money selling hardware, middleware, and services.
- As more of that hardware, middleware, services is supporting standards, you can build bigger and bigger solutions, and it's good for IBM's business.

Question 2:

Q: re incremental opportunity for Linux. To what extent is Linux demand incremental, vs. displacing other operating systems?

A: It is early in the process, so hard to tell. However, he believes that Linux will cause a big expansion in the market. Includes an expansion in the number of products, including consumer products that will integrate IT technology. The TIVO is a good example. - computer tech is going further into consumer electronics, telecommunications, and others. All those consumer appliances can become network applicances. Believe the IT industry is going to grow - the more devices you connect, the more services you need, bigger services.
Clearly the growth of Linux will also come by displacing existing legacy systems, but this will not be as significant as the incremental growth.

Question 3:

Q: (1) re Linux kernel: existing kernel is "long in the tooth", how to we get the predicted commitment to Linux without more visibility on when the next kernel will arrive and what it's capabilities will be?
(2) re revenue growth rate: in Linux server market - the real opportunity in the market may be embedded systems, with money to be made on management.

A: (1) regarding the kernel being "long in the tooth". Operating systems are like fine wine - they need time to mature. The more mature they are, the better they get in the sense of quality, scalability. THe best operating systems in the world, they are not that young. Compared to them, Linux is actually quite young! (comments on early development of kernel by Linus, etc.) In 1998, 1999, it hit the big time. Kind of like TCP/IP. It had been around for a long time, used by the research community, until it hit the big time in 94/95.
The next version of Linux, 2.4, is scheduled to come out this fall, deploying next year, higher levels on SMP, concurrency, etc. The community is working on this, IBM's tech center is trying to help the community. Other vendors like Silicon Graphics, are also contributing, this makes Linux better and better for applicances, desktops, as well as larger and larger servers.
2. Regardiung the explosion of linux appliances. IBM views this as a wonderful business opportunity. They need technology and they need services. Technology like microprocessors, very small storage devices, analog stuff like integrated circuits for communications. This is driving IBM's tech business. Then they need integration services, this feeds the software business. A lot of work on WebSphere is dedicated to support of pervasive devices. The more of them you have out there, the more you need stuff like WebSpere on systems like the 390.

Services is the biggest part of the e-business opportunity. 60% of the revenue. 5% is hardware, the rest is software, more or less.

Big opportunity. If you have 10 billions of chatty little devices each doing lots of transactions, that's the kind of load that will keep the system 390 mainframes busy. Theres a lot of demand for server capacity.

Middlewhere is also a big part of the equation. A big part of WebSphere is targeted to this.

Question 4.

Q: IBM is working with many distributors. Do you see a possibility of Linux fragmenting, and if so, do you see a possibility of IBM providing their own version of Linux?

A: We are working primarily with the 4 major worldwide distributers: Red Hat, TurboLinux, SUSE, and Caldera.
And we do different things with each. Suse does the system 390, for example. Suse is big in europe, while Turbo is big in Asia. Red Flag Linux is the biggest in China. Mandrake is big in France, and on the desktop. Hard Hat Linux is big on embedded devices. So, over 150 distributors. They don't need IBM to be a distributor. They are better off working with distributors to integrate the whole system for their customers.
If the problem is in the Linux kernel, IBM can get together with the appropriate distributors.

There is an organization called the Free Standard Group, and just about all the major distributors are part of it and are committed to avoiding fragmentation. Look at other efforts like XML - the industry is doing well for keeping things together.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)