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IBM and Red Hat Sign Major Support Agreement

Posted by chrisd on from the red-fedora-on-a-blue-suit dept.

gnudot writes: "Red Hat announced this morning that they have entered into an agreement with IBM to provide support services for the entire eServer product line. This includes zSeries, iSeries pSeries in addition to the xSeries (What no qSeries? or 7Series?) which is already supported. Here is the story on Yahoo."

15 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. sidenote... by Misha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    this sent RedHat shares flying, as well as some other Linux stocks, such as Caldera and VA Systems.

    --



    I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
    1. Re:sidenote... by selectspec · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think this pretty much seals the deal with RedHat as the defacto Linux distro for the commerical OEMs. What do people think?

      --

      Someone you trust is one of us.

  2. not just support and services by tim_maroney · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The press release at Red Hat also mentions software solutions.

    I'm not sure what to make of this exactly. How many of these servers does IBM sell? If the services market here is lucrative, then why doesn't IBM keep it for itself? Still, it seems like it might be a nice little revenue stream for Red Hat.

    Tim

    1. Re:not just support and services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Being a somewhat dedicated AS400 (oh, sorry, iSeries) developer, and working for an iSeries reseller, I can say that these people do spend the money for support. However, a lot of these companies would like to enter the "e-business" world and web-enable a lot of these traditional, green-screen driven applications that have been developed over the years. One way to do this is to LPAR these $500k + servers into 2 logical servers, one side running OS400, and the other Linux. IBM's current support group for Linux (located here in my area of Dallas, Texas) are not very strong, and instead rely heavily on the current AIX support infrastructure. It's not unheard of to drop $10k a year on an IBM software subscription just to keep OS and other important software up to date and at the current PTF levels.

    2. Re:not just support and services by tim_maroney · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Tens of thousands per year. More important still is the installed base of these machines, which run into the hundreds of thousands. To be honest, most of the installed base of these machines don't currently run Linux, being split among OS/390, OS/400, AIX, and (of course)

      I'm not sure of the source of your numbers, but let's take them as golden, and say 50,000. Now, I wonder how many of those new systems run Linux, and how many run IBM's OS. Would half be a nice optimistic guesstimate? As for conversion of machines already in the field, I'd have to say I'd be surprised if it were as much as five percent overall, and much less than that per year. For now let's ignore it. So that's maybe 25,000 each year.

      Now, how much are the support contracts? The Red Hat site doesn't really give numbers for all its options, but the Enterprise Edition comes with a pretty sweet support contract, and it's $2,500. A later message in the thread says IBM support can be about $10,000 per annum, so let's split the difference and say $6,250 per box. Let's further be optimistic and say that anyone who can afford one of these servers will get a support contract -- even though people running Linux may be inherently cost-averse.

      Yeah, I know this is really fuzzy. I'm just trying to get somewhere close to an order of magnitude here.

      So that would be something close to 25,000 * $6,250 = $156 million per year, increasing by that amount per year, and more than doubling Red Hat's current revenue in the first year. Not too shabby! But I'm not sure how real those numbers are, or what the cost of generating the revenue would be -- services businesses traditionally have pretty slim margins, and it looks like there's some R&D to be done before this even starts. Still, if this is even in the ballpark it could be pretty sweet.

      Plus, [IBM has] laid off the risk of Linux failing and the cost of hiring new people to an independent entity.

      That's the thing that concerns me. There's something about this that smells more like passing the buck than sharing the wealth. If the adoption percentages are significantly lower than my guesstimates -- like 25% of new systems instead of 50%, or a 50% purchase of support contracts instead of 100%, much less both -- it's not going to do that much for Red Hat. I guess time will tell. For now I'm happy to be confused on a higher plane.

      Tim

  3. And I STILL say IBM should do a Linux distro! by PRR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IBM's support of Linux has been great, and I realize they've said they won't do their own distro, but I STILL say they should! They could probably buy RedHat outright, which already seems to have close ties to IBM at RTP.

    An IBM Linux distro would become sorta like the "IBM PC" in that it would be a quasi-standard that everyone rallies around, but IBM doesn't really control. This already happened with the PC. The GPL would ensure it further. (IBM's hardware-centricity would also help ensure impartiality for software) In other words, it would create a sort of "majority-defacto" Linux API that developers could at least shoot for instead of the current bit of fragmentation. A (relatively) standard API has worked to M$ advantage for attracting developers.

    IBM's good name would help Linux acceptance with the PHB's :) This already happened with IBM's name on small PC's which were seen as curiosities by management types when they first appeared years ago. Linux is in a similar place that the small computers like Apple and RadioShack were in then. Once you get this kind of corporate and overall acceptance, the momentum builds, more folks get involved, and things get even better.

    1. Re:And I STILL say IBM should do a Linux distro! by finkployd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      IBM has possibly the most impressive history on Earth of "Bad Marketing for Good Operating Systems". I mean, think about it, AIX rocks (although I see Linux passing it in x years), OS/2 ruled, and OS/390 defines stability in a way that no other OS will even approach in decades. Yet they cannot market them at all.

      Now hardware, IBM knows hardware. They can make it, they can market it, and they can make money off it. Let them stick with what they do best and leave the rest to others. If they happen to be able to sell more hardware by helping someone else develop software for it, then it's better for everyone.

      Finkployd

  4. Re:Now *this* is the way Open Source should work.. by RobL3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Apparently, it's better than AIX"
    No.

    AIX will still run on clients high-end mission critical servers. Linux will run on small to midrange servers.

    If you think that a Fortune 100 company like the one I work for is going to switch >1000 AIX servers to Linux, You Are Nuts. We want IBM reliability, IBM support, and IBM accountability.

  5. What about the other distros? by DJFelix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whatever happened to IBM's statement that they will support any Linux distro on the planet on an IBM eServer?

    I was just about to order a whole set of those little guys and was planning on running Debian GNU/Linux on them. If it won't be supported, I'll have to buy something else, or dog forbid build them myself.

  6. Let's not get to excited yet... by wls · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The real test here is going to be time, and whether or not IBM decides to stand behind this instance of Linux for a substancial period of time..

    What this does buy the linux community is the fact that Linux has support by a big name, rich company. IT managers should feel more comfortable with this knowledge.

    In the past I've seen IT departments lean toward Microsoft in their solutions, even knowing the product was defective, because they honestly thought they could get individual attention and support.

    IBM certainly knows how to deliver better support than Microsoft, especially since IBM will come on site.

  7. Re: not pissing off by mughi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Why piss off Redmond when they don't need to?

    One might be able to argue that IBM has been doing things just to piss-off and beat Microsoft. Open-source labs, linux for iPaq, and their whole jump behind Java...

    IBM seems to have gotten into a situation where they can benefit the public while at the same time take a swipe at a long-time 'enemy' (remember IBM getting the short in with DOS, OS/2, etc.). Seems like a win for consumers, and an example of open-source and the free market together benefiting consumers.

  8. Re:Rock on! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Behind the scenes -- IBM invested big dough into beefing up it's NT/2000 services group, but hasn't seen the results they might like. One big reason is that Microsoft switched it's services group from break-even to for-profit, which means that IBM competes with them on their home turf. No sane MS customer is going to try to run DB2 on Windows anyway.

    So, Linux is a good bet. But, IBM doesn't want to put their brandname on the Linux box because then they would have to provide IBM-style service and support (as opposed to the amaturish stuff you get now from the 'bazaar'). So, they pawn the distribution bit off onto a 3rd party.

    (Imagine IBM Linux and think about RH 5.2/Kernel 2.0/glibc 2.0 still receiving active support and kernel changes being dictated by big customers instead of programmers.)

    The only 'light' IBM sees is that the real money's in the middleware (WebSphere, DB2) and implementation services. And to be effective there, they can't have their normal platform-lock strategy. So Linux brings a little 'peace and love' marketing gloss to the situation, RedHat gets a little cut, but IBM still makes bank the old fashioned way.

  9. Speaking of the 390 (a very obscure pun) by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It's the current sequel to the IBM System 360, the first computer with a byte-oriented architecture. Previous systems used word-level addressing. This meant that different kinds of users couldn't share computers, because the same word size (and thus data precision) doesn't make sense for all applications. The various 360 models had different word sizes, but all used byte-level addressing. So word size became a matter of efficiency, not compatibility.

    Thus IBM marketed the 360 series as the "all-around" computer. Which is why its logo was a compass rose. And, of course, the punny name...

  10. But how do you get True Blue backup of Redhat 7.2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    One of the most desirable features of Red hat v7.2 is being able to do a non-destructive upgrade from Ext2 to the journalling file system Ext3. As soon as the upgrade is completted, IBM's prefered backup "solution" will *PURPOSILY* stop backing up the file systems as if they no longer exist!

    Rather, the needs of the Linux user is secondary to the needs of IBM's R&D. File systems that most Linux users have never heard of such as GPFS and Episode are accepted as valid file systems for IBM backup while more frequently used file systems such as Ext3 and xfs are ignored. Even more common true blue file systems such as jfs and AFS are skipped by the IBM backup "solution."

    So... IBM is now enlisting the help of Red hat? So what?! At the end of the day, will I be able to restore the latest files from my Red hat v7.2 Ext3 fs which *should* have been backed up to TSM? Will Red hat be able to assist me in getting TSM running on a pSeries F50 running Linux?

    The bottom line is that several departments of IBM such as Tivoli are still treating Linux as an expiermental operating system (not production) and treating IBM R&D as the only supported users. Real users, production users of ext3, xfs, jfs and afs as opposed to users of expiermental file systems are finding that True Blue does not care about the integratity of their daily incremental backups. Those that listen to Red hat about the advantages for a non-destructive upgrade to Ext3 during an upgrade to v7.2 will still find that the same file systems that used to back up fine before the upgrade are now being purposily ignored. Users that listen to IBM DeveloperWorks that JFS is now at v1.0 and is production ready are also stuck in the same sinking ship. And while YellowDog Linux runs fine on some pSeries RS/6000s, Tivoli has yet to provide a single client for Linux PPC.

    So, now that Red hat is contracted with IBM, what type of improvement in support for IBM departments such as Tivoli should we expect? NONE. True Blue PATHETIC support. It isn't up to Red hat to get Tivoli support into shape, it is up to IBM and they continue to do a half ass job of it. I'm putting in just as much work, if not more, in monitoring TSM failling backups as I did when running ADSM v2 under Linux emulation of SCO. Nothing has changed and it is still up to the individual Linux users to make choosen true blue "solutions" truely "work."

    Give me the source code to the TSM client. Then we can discuss your "support" options. Until then, IBM is the last company you want to do business with for Linux. "LOVE-PIECE-LINUX" isn't going to get your files back when you figure out that your Red hat v7.2 server was never backed up since you upgraded! "eServers from IBM running Linux" will NOT save you a bundle of money when you need to recreate all your lost work that wasn't backed up since you upgraded to Red hat v7.2.

    Backups are a *BASIC* part of supporting a Linux server. Until you get that part right, all that is being done is hot-word compliant marketting, not *support*.

  11. Ironic situation. The enemy of my enemy is my... by vbprgrmr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's an ironic situation that the people (myself included) who are cheering any success Linux has with IBM, also cheered the past day the micro-computer came home to hopefully free us from the tyranny and centralized power of the main-frames from IBM, and the blue suits, the corporate mentality, and the whole IBM philosophy.

    It's incredible that Microsoft has fowled up things so badly that it causes us to cheer the success of our former adversary.

    Long live IBM and Linux!!
    Damn. This old hippie can't believe he just said that.