IBM Leads Team to Alleviate Data Storage Woes

Kailash Nadh writes to tell us ABC News is reporting that IBM is teaming up with several other companies to form a group called Aperi. This group will attempt to "push the open source idea deeper into computing" and "free up the bottlenecks that can occur when a business has bought tape and disk storage systems from a variety of vendors." The partnership is to include companies like Cisco, Sun, Fujitsu, and several others.

Comments

Entertainment for the Open Source community?

[msbsod]

Companies channel their "news". And who else could bring us better entertainment than ABC News, a Disney channel? The whole idea that IBM is pushing Linux is just too funny. IBM has no interest in Linux. IBM wants to sell their stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but why do we need IBM between the Open Source community and customers who already bought their equipment? It is the good old strategy of putting yourself between the brain and the money. All distributors of entertainment industry work that way. So, let's welcome IBM in their new role as entertainer, with Disney as partner.

Re:Entertainment for the Open Source community?

[Vellmont]

but why do we need IBM between the Open Source community and customers who already bought their equipment?

Because when you've got a billion dollar company riding on open source software you need someone to help you NOW when you run into a problem, not try to call up the open source developer who may be on vacation, screwing his girlfriend, whatever. This is even true for the small companies out there, just more true for the larger ones.

Re:Entertainment for the Open Source community?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

IBM sells support and software too. For the software, there needs to be something to run it on, if the client wants to run Linux, then they'll have to make sure they can run on Linux too. It's kind of tough to get reliable, good and swift on-site support.

Meh

[Jeffrey Baker]

Brought to you by Cisco, Sun, CA, Brocade, NetApp, McData, and Fujitsu. In other words, the same bunch of jerks who got you into this mess in the first place. Great. I'll expect something really useless like Ultra Wide iSCSI or some other bullshit, for only $999 per node, of course.

Dear IBM, et al

[christurkel]

A good idea would be to encourage, nay, preinstall open source software on all computers you sell, including desktops.

Yours truly, joe wantsomethingotherthanWindows

Of course, IBM wants to sell their stuff.. However

[valdis]

Something to keep in mind is that one of IBM's *biggest* divisions is now World Services, which is their consulting arm. Now, the consulting services people make the same amount (more or less) no matter if they do the work on Linux or AIX.

The difference is that IBM can either have 5,000 people doing AIX support, or it can have 100 or so people doing Linux support and development, and let the open source community provide the other 4,900 people.

Which do you think looks better on the balance sheet?

Re:Doesn't IBM sell data storage solutions?

[Jason Earl]

IBM can make this sort of a play because it has such a wide array of services and a support arm that is right in the trenches. So, for example, it can see that its UNIX gear is selling well, but a lot of IBM's UNIX customers are opting for EMC storage. IBM's service arm is happy to set that up for you, but its sales arm is not nearly as happy. So IBM gets to work at making storage a commodity and then providing service, support, and hardware. This is a win for IBM because it no longer needs EMC's help to sell an IBM solution. The profit that used to go into EMC's pocket now goes into IBM's pocket. The margins probably aren't as large as EMC used to get, but IBM doesn't have to share. IBM is more than happy to shrink the size of a market that it happens to compete in if it thinks that it can get a bigger slice of the pie or more service revenue. Interestingly enough, commoditizing a market usually causes it to grow because more people can afford the good or service. By creating a commodity IBM can often finagle both a bigger market *and* a larger slice of the pie.

The best part is that this sort of strategy doesn't necessarily mean that IBM has to give up its current data storage products. With a little bit of differentiation IBM might still be able to sell "high end" storage gear that works well with their specialty OSes and hardware while offering a lower-cost standards-based solution that competes favorably with IBM's competitors. Just because IBM is pushing Linux certainly hasn't made its AIX business go away. Just like Linux gives IBM more ammunition when competing with Microsoft commodity storage gives IBM more ammunition when competing with EMC.

This also goes to show how the folks at IBM are much smarter than the folks at Sun. Sun was facing the same problem as IBM in the storage arena (people wanted EMC's gear instead of Sun's gear). Sun is trying to remedy that through the purchase of another storage vendor (StorageTek) that is likewise having trouble competing. IBM, on the other hand, has opted to kick the bottom out of the market and see if it can't dominate over a commodity storage field.

Re:Of course, IBM wants to sell their stuff.. Howe

[msbsod]

Having 5,000 people doing AIX support was much better for IBM than having 100 people busy with Linux support, because all 5,000 people were paid by the customers. If they could IBM would continue this way. But AIX is hardly an expanding market. So they change their business model and put themselves between the customers and the Open Source community. HP and Sun do the same.

Thank you :)

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll make an excellent apologist, telling us that we don't know anything about something.

However, there's a little tiny detail... nothing important, you just you didn't provide any factual info to tell us what we SHOULD know about.

But hey, this is slashdot, right? :)