IBM Germany Leaving Vista for Linux

UltimaGuy writes "During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made a very interesting statement..."Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista." "

Comments

Exaggerations!

[blackmonday]

Its BS to say that "no one will upgrade" to Vista. Are you telling me that software developers will not be using Vista at all? It's a ridiculous notion for a company that develops hundreds of products for the Windows OS.

Re:Exaggerations!

[Penguinoflight]

IBM will not be forced to upgrade to vista. Their software runs server side, and almost all of it is supported directly by IBM. There is no reason in fact for IBM to support Vista, and by doing so support Microsoft.

Think of it this way: If nobody supports vista, nobody will have to support vista! While IBM moving away from microsoft is a move in the right direction, IBM will not be able to crush Vista on their own, they will need help.

The only group that will need to support Vista is game developers. Most (with exception of Epic, iD, and a few others) have gone so far to avoid opengl, and embrace directx, they will be forced to adopt Vista just to keep things moderately insecure (Microsoft will strategically drop security support for xp soon enough).

It should be noted, there is no reason for game devs to support windows; It's far too insecure for gaming, and that wont get any better. A move to linux (and with it FreeBSD by binary compatibility) would allow devs to go with only 2-3 major platforms: OpenGL for PS3, linux/PC, and possibly nintendo revolution. Of course you would have to support directX for xbox360, but over time the extra cost to develop for microsoft would probably kill their projects.

We have come to the point where the time to move away from microsoft is NOW, but unfortunately it will take a while for vendors and developers to realize that.

Re:Now, is that IBM Germany, or more Worldwide?

[swillden]

Either is compelling as a statement from Big Blue

IBM's CIO has already made clear that IBM's direction for its employees' desktops is Linux. Back in 2004 he released a statement that IBM would standardize on Linux desktops by the end of 2005, but it was quickly realized that was too ambitious a goal. There's just too much stuff in IBM that is tied to Windows. Still, it's widely recognized that Linux *is* the direction, worldwide, even if there isn't a specific timeline in place.

As an IBMer who uses Linux as his desktop platform for work, I read these sorts of announcements with glee because they just reinforce the message internally that new internal IT systems should not require Windows and that old ones that do require Windows need to be replaced. At present I still have to keep a Win2K VMware image around to deal with the occasional Windows-specific internal tools, and to deal with the occasional Office doc that OOo can't manage. As more groups within IBM move more aggressively away from Windows, however, I expect to need that image less and less, and someday I won't need it at all.

ObDisclaimer: I'm an IBM employee, but not a spokesperson. Everything I've said about IBM's plans and policies is just my vague memories of publicly-released information. If you find official statements that contradict mine, I'm wrong.

Boy, doesn't this subthread prove Dell right?

[Tran]

The top level post was a clear enough question regarding business relationships, but one level down the argument already is about which distro is better.