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IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the big-deals dept.

dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."

5 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. A Red Hat shop? by Epeeist · · Score: 5, Informative

    > Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,'

    This would explain why we have been running SuSE on our mainframes for the last two years then.

    IBM has had marketing agreements with Red Hat, SuSE and and TurboLinux for quite some time. It may favour Red Hat in the States, but it seems quite agnostic about which distribution to recommend to customers.

  2. Re:question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You must have been out of the IT world for quite a while. IBM sells:
    - intel servers (running linux or windows)
    - AMD opteron servers (SUSE has an AMD64 port)
    - power processor boxes (running AIX and linux)

    A press release from 2000: SuSE delivers Enterprise Linux for IBM RS/6000

  3. Re:question? by nharmon · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are THE major player in the very large server market, however they are still a formitable competitor in the medium-sized to Pentium-class server market.

    And for good reason. IBM packages their servers with a LOT of goodies. IBM Director (formerly known as Tivoli) comes free with every server. And now we're getting SuSE.

  4. Re:question? by barthrh2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Out of the IT World? More like off of the planet!

    IBM is the #3 server vendor in the world behind HP and Dell. They have about 15% market share. IBM has been investing billions into Linux and the types of servers that would support it best (notably blade servers -- perfect for grids).

    In December 2000 IBM committed to invest $1Billion in Linux software, hardware, services, the open source community and partnerships during 2001. That's only 2001! If anything, they have only increase their rate of investment.

    Add to all of this their strong commitment to WebSphere and Java, and you have a company that has more than embraced Linux. When IBM invested 2.5 Billion in a new semiconductor manufacturing facility,they automated the facility using Linux.

    Come back to our world where Big Blue is bigger & bluer than ever!

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion