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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." "
Why Redhat? Didn't IBM cooperate with SuSE so far, or has this changed when SuSE was taken over by Novell?
Georg
Either is compelling as a statement from Big Blue, but the latter of the two is much more devastating
as it means QUITE a bit of revenue on MS' part.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I can't say I'm surprised. In conjuction with Microsoft's involvement with the Trusted Computing Group, and the TPM hardware appearing in new PCs, the next version of Windows (Vista) will solidify Microsoft's near total control over the desktop.
Having TPM hardware in the machine at all is bad enough... if you move to Vista there will (quite literally) be no escape. The computer you purchase will not belong to you and will be deliberately designed to be secure against you, rather than for you. Vista will be the software component of this lockdown.
Now look at IBM -- for them to base their business around Vista would make them *completely* under the control of Microsoft. Their desktops could be secretly backdoored, their data locked down and only accessible with the permission of Microsoft. 100% Bill's bitch. Why submit to that when you can (and are) pay off Red Hat to work on a Trusted Computing version of the Linux kernel (google for the project)... and have that kind of control yourself?
Smaller companies and normal consumers though... that's a different matter. They are going to be screwed royally with the introduction of Vista. They just don't realise it yet, and won't until they've paid over their cash to Dell or HP. DRM throughout the system (apps and data), and all under the control of Uncle Bill and his Rights Management Servers.
"Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista."
And why should they? What does Vista give IBM that their present solution doesn't?
Companies not ready for disclosure of things of this nature almost always flatly deny them occuring- just witness XGI being bought by ATI recently; both companies denied they were doing it- but they did it anyway. I've little doubts that they may have done this- they've been building up to it for several years now. Now whether it's actually going to happen, on the other hand, remains to be seen.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Its global, and pervasive.
This has been coming for a long time. Remember that IBM has been one of the largest forces behind Eclipse. Not because its great as a development platform -- because its got potential as a great APPLICATION platform.
Roughly 50% of the large enterprise email market is using IBM Lotus Notes. You may not like it, but its true. Different studies wieght it differently by a few points to either side. Pick the study and you can find all kinds of results. The counts are close enough that the difference is accounted for by what you count as client use, who gives you the numbers, etc. For example, MS typically likes to count anyone who owns Office as an Outlook user which will skew the numbers quite a bit. Regardless, the market is split nearly in have between MS and IBM for that market with small shares going to a few other players (like Groupwise).
* Keep in mind, we're talking LARGE ENTERPRISE here. Annecdotes about companies under 500,000,000 in gross revenue don't count.
IBM has been pushing Linux at the desktop in their offices where possible for at least three years. One thing holding them back has been that their own platform, Notes, doesn't run easily on Linux natively. The reason isn't Notes -- which was built to be cross platform, resulting in some often critisized UI choices. The reason is the same as so many other companies don't support Linux for the workstation. Its difficult to make a generic installation and maintenance solution.
With Eclipse as the base, IBM has spent a few years on their new WORKPLACE products. The grand plan is pretty different from what they've ended up with, but they are very close to roll out of their "Hannover" product which is Lotus Notes (actual, real code - not rewritten or made compatible) with a UI done in Eclipse. On top of that, Eclipse becomes Workplace Rich Client when you add a few plug in layers which allow managment, server based rollout and maintenance, and other portal stuff they use.
It also handles off-line use and synchronization for out of office and traveling.
It works. I've seen it. I've played with it.
What that means is that their "killer apps" -- those applications critical to the success of people working in IBM offices don't even need to be "ported". They're in Lotus Notes applications already and keep working as they have. Also, their Email client works as it always has.
Add to this that Workplace has Open Office based applications built into it as well, and a new thing called an "Activity Explorer" (which IMO is going to be the most important NEW thing from them).
Tie it all together and they can do everything they need to do without a Windows based application. They've cut themselves free entirely.
What IBM has done is not just TALK about making a linux desktop workable -- they've created the missing pieces so that they can actually support their own massive workforce with such a rollout.
Bravo to them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
The whole concept of Vista requiring new hardware is going to be a real challenge. If ever there should be a perfect time for a non-MS alternative to emerge and provide a smooth link with past/present/future hardware, this is that time.
IBM has little to gain by enriching Microsoft and accepting a DRM world. They have a great deal to gain by presenting a viable alternative. It will be very interesting to see Asian manufacturers gearing up to make non-DRM hardware that they KNOW will not play with Vista. If Lenovo leads, others will follow.
Microsoft's best alternative is to go the X-Box route. Subsidize the hell out of the fast-but-crippled new hardware so to drive acceptance of the software. Then the whole package acts like a cash register, where users, developers, and service providers can be made to pay to play.
The concept of "software as a service" aka the "Net PC" failed because the cost/benefit was simply not there. It still isn't, but the mircale of subsidized hardware can make it look that way long enough to get the customers to swallow the poisoned pill.
I'm glad to see other countries widely adopting Linux, but it seems a disporportionate number is coming from the rest of the world versus the US (with the occasional exception). Is this because the US is somehow more open-source-close-minded and anti free (and better tasting) lunches?
> no way that IBM can convert to Linux until it has ported Lotus Notes.
Web Client!
I have seen the notes web client grow to look almost exactly like the desktop app, only feature I see missing is archiving. With the company I work for, in their Sarbanes-Oxley related transisition, their already trying to downplay the use of email archives as acceptable. So I look for it to be banned at my company within a year, removing the need for supporting that PC app all-together.
The other obvious missing ingrediant is offline email composing, and hanheld synch. The first, the notes client isn't especially good at anyway. the second is taken care of by 3rd party apps today.
I see this same trend among my own customers. There is real preperation going on for NOT moving to Vista. Some of them will probably role anyway, but lately the trend is to move business critical apps to web-based alternatives and move away from MSFT proprietary clients like Outlook and IE. Preparation that makes switching the desktop OS much easier.
I think many would merely use it for leverage to squeeze concessions out of MSFT, but based on the amount of interest and effort I'm seeing doesn't look like posing. It seems serious this time. MSFT will have to come up with better discounts. A few vouchers for training and support calls aren't going to cut it.
Exciting times to be in IT.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That to my knowledge is one part of the workplace desktop.. The desktop more or less is an eclipse based universal application shell it even has an office integration. I saw the thing during a presentation at IBM a while ago, cool stuff.
Nope, this is not a play for a discount. Besides trying to push their flagship product, IBM is really tired of dealing with MS's crap. Incedentally, IBM gave MS close to 10% of their reported revenue in licensing fees last year. MS does not give IBM much of a discount on their products. This move will save IBM billions of dollars, lets hope they dont fall for the MS bait-n-switch trick.
Oh, the Inquirer reports that vista eats 800 MB of RAM?
What makes you think that a product in development doesn't have a memory leak? What makes you think that Vista snapshots don't have the debug symbols compiled in?
And let me be the first to say that I'm not sure if that screenshots in that page really means the system is eating 800 MB of ram or they're also counting the filesystem cache as we do in linux.
Please, wait for the vista release and *then* speak.