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IBM Promotes Linux Partners to Highest Tier
Anonymous Anonmenon writes "Big Blue was at it again today after it promoted the two leading commercial Linux distributions to the highest level tier of its Strategic Alliance Program. From the article: '[The Strategic Alliance Program] is designed to allow independent software vendors (ISV) work through one point of contact within IBM as opposed to navigating through several relationships with representatives from different divisions. The move was billed by executives from all companies as a means to make it simpler for clients to acquire open standards-based Linux hardware, software, and services through integrated sales, distribution and services channels.' The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE."
IBM has been a good friend to those parts of the open source community that fit its overall strategy. However, the emphasis on Java shows the importance it places on trying to protect its WebSphere revenue.
Then again probably not.
IBM can talk the talk all day but at the end of the day regardless of all the Linux lip service they really don't walk the walk, and probably never will.
While it's nice to read good news like this for the Linux community, this seems more like marketing people on both sides coming up with "something" to justify their existance ... is there some "meat" behind this or am I just missing it?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE.
IBM is slipping. Don't they know that Java is so 90's?So Novell wants to reinforce their commitment to the Java community while at the same time funding Mono, a project porting .NET to Linux/etc...
interesting... very interesting... (strokes soul patch)
But I think Perl/PHP/etc. will continue to gain popularity ammoung smaller companies and pure web companies. (Ie. Companies that are more progressive in nature.)
Think Deeply.
is better than none.
The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE.
The only conclusion one can draw out of that article is that Novel and REdHat obviously don't read slashdot and therefore aren't real nerd and we shouldn't pay attention to them. Seriously.
The True FOSS Skype Replacement
This has far less to do with Linux business usefulness, per se, as it does with IBM's continued attempts to publicize Linux to the larger world (see their Super Bowl ads).
Which is a noble goal, certainly.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
With these ISV's in the SAP at IBM, what TLA's will they TON?
Read the subject line. Python is faster to develop for than Java yet Python is able to produce Java compatible class files using the Jython utility.
Hmm...I'm not quite sure how you'd decide that. According to IBM's latest 10-Q report, in the quarter ending 30 Sept. 2005, their software division had revenues of a little over 3.8 billion US dollars, and costs of 483 million US dollars. By contrast, their hardware division had revenues of 5.12 billion dollars, but costs of 3.2 billion dollars. IOW, they're showing a gross quarterly profit of about 3.3 billion dollars from software, and only about 1.9 billion from hardware. Looked at on a percentage basis, software looks even better for them: it constitutes almost 18% of their revenues, but only about 3% of their costs.
Their highest revenue division is services -- but even with the largest revenues, this still has slightly lower profits than their software (about 300 million less per quarter than software).
As far as sinking goes: their revenue from software is up about 200 million dollars per quarter from a year ago, while their costs are up only about 20 million dollars a quarter. IOW, their total sales are growing, and they're getting better profit margins too!
Just for comparison, Microsoft's latest 10-Q [warning: Word format, of course] shows they have about 9.6 billion in quarterly revenues (total) and costs of about 6.3 billion, for a gross profit of a bit under 2.6 billion. IOW, IBM's software division produces more profit than Microsoft!
In fairness, that comparison probably isn't entirely accurate: in Microsoft's case, it's taking essentially all expenses into account, including things like R&D (1.5 billion dollars a quarter!) which probably aren't accounted for on a divisional basis at IBM (though I didn't dig through things enough to be sure about that).
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Sure, it's fine to have that kind of software level support, but with their apparent lack of documentation (let alone support) of anything more powerful than a Matrox G450 (which is lowend for that kind of machine).
There isnt even binary level support, which makes things very odd that they cripple their own hardware (see that there is no option for anything but a lowend GXT135P, a G450 PCI card) - given that it'd be fine to have enough documentation to run their highend GXT3xxx/4x00/6x00 video hardware.
It's fine to have that software well-supported, but if the hardware isnt there...
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I I wonder how they they keep letting things things like repeated repeated words words pass pass unnoticed unnoticed.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Tell your "friend" (if he is real) to visit this intranet URL (https://lifeboat.ibm.com/lifeboat/stats/lifeboat/ stathome.php) for the latest statistics on Linux (6792 since April 2004) and Windows (867 since April 2004) installations inside the company. Keep in mind that this site only counts installs of the "official" IBM client images (both of which are installed via a custom made Debian boot cd, btw). Before April 2004, there were many thousands more installs of the older Linux image. And all this was before the availability of a Linux native version of Notes (which has just come out internally, non-IBMers wont be seeing it for a few more months though) and sametime! For Windows, most people use the IBM client image that was installed when they got their machine. And for Linux, many people (like me, for example) replace Windows with a free version of Linux like Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora. If you friends inside IBM have never seen a Linux box inside IBM, then they are either lying or are blind.
One thing that is not advertised as heavily as our gradual migration to Linux is our much quicker migration to Firefox. It is the IBM standard browser and most of the people I work with day to day use only Firefox, whether they use Linux, Windows or even OS X. There is (last I checked) only a single intranet site that still requires IE, and according to their notes, they will be supporting Firefox by the end of the year.
The The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE."
So does this mean we might be seeing a working Java implentation soon that isn't controlled by Sun?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I am not trying to discredit your numbers, but take this into note. Most of the hardware they sell probably also generates software revenue, but software can be sold completely separate of hardware.
Because, most of the committers actively working on Eclipse development are IBM employees. Improving Eclipse is their full-time job.
Many other companies are involved to some extent or other with Eclipse, but IBM has a huge commitment to its success and pays dozens of full-time developers to work on it.
If SCO beats IBM in court, or beats Novell in court, or... Oh, never mind
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Don't look into 'em.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Oh, no problem at all -- I don't really care a whole lot whether the numbers are given a lot of credence at all -- after all, they're IBM's numbers, not mine. I simply looked, and didn't quite see where the parent comment seemed to fit with reality. In all honesty, it's still possible that it might though -- just for an obvious example, as you've noted, it may be that most of their software sales are really tied to hardware sales. When I said I didn't really understand the parent comment, I was being honest -- I'm not sure it's wrong, but based on the financial data I'm not quite sure what makes it obviously right either. These are supplied to prospective investors, so I'm sure they try to put the best face on things they can, so these numbers should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, at least to somebody like me who's not a financial analyst, it's not particularly obvious that their future is anywhere close to all doom and gloom by any means.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Any language that uses indentation as part of its syntax should be taken out to the back side of the barn and beaten mercilessly. End of discussion.
IBM talks about supporting Linux a lot. But try to buy a thinkpad with Linux installed on it. Can't do it.
IBM will be at SCALE 4x this year for its 4rth year as a sponsor and exhibitor.