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Under a Big Blue Shadow

Posted by Zonk on from the looks-like-rain dept.

PenguinCandidate writes "Linux server market share numbers can be tricky, with HP touting itself as a leader and IBM garnering all the press. For one analyst, it's all about identity." From the article: "HP can say that it has led the worldwide Linux server market for 29 consecutive quarters. HP can also say with confidence, thanks to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker from May 2005, that it outpaced IBM by nearly eight percentage points in quarterly revenue share. And yet, that Big Blue thundercloud remains. "

5 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Less is more by fembots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To me, HP is a middleman doing anything profitable, while IBM sticks to one thing and tries to do it well.

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    1. Re:Less is more by arete · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In more specific terms, IBM sells Linux and Linux servers and lots of other related solutions.

      HP sells lots of servers that HAPPEN to be Linux.

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  2. Market Share by coop0030 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be honest this article seems accurate enough. I didn't even know that HP was selling Linux servers. They definitely don't try to make it known, and do not get very much press if they do try.

    IBM dominates the Linux news everywhere I look.

    I think the biggest reason is that they do so many different things for Linux, and it seems they actually help the development of Linux much more than just selling servers.

    There in lies the biggest difference.
    HP = selling servers
    IBM = developing new features in Linux, and selling servers.

  3. Re:This is the summary by DarkMavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No surprise here as HP has historically had a tight connection with Microsoft. IBM has little to lose when touting their support for Linux. They don't like Microsoft anyway. HP on the other hand, with their huge PC division and Intel server division, has much more to lose. That's probably why you don't hear HP's executives talking up Linux as much as Big Blue's.

  4. Re:Who contributes more. by tytso · · Score: 5, Informative

    IBM definitely contributes more in the way of core kernel functionality (it's not just JFS, but also we have a number of engineers, myself included, who publically contribute on LKML and on ext2-devel on the ext2/3 filesystem). I'd have to think hard to think of any HP kernel contributors, besides the folks who work on the architecture-specific Itanium code.... (thinking....) Nope, got nothing.

    That being said, I do have to give snaps to HP for employing Keith Packard and Jim Gettys. Keith in particular has been pretty much the only X developer that has been working on new core features in X11 for the past couple of years.

    But in the final analysis, between IBM making 500 patents available, and all of the IBM developers contributing various enhancements to the linux Kernel, it's really not at all surprising that more people think of IBM when it comes to Linux.