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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
heise a german news site has just published an articles saying IBM denied the claims http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/70532
who wants to rule the world?
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?
All I can say is, it's about time!
s /product5.nsf/wdocs/workplaceoverview
http://www-142.ibm.com/software/workplace/product
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If IBM is not going to move to Windows Vista, does that mean that more people will see some more of the advantages of moving to Linux?
I encrypt all my files with Double XOR Encryption!
I believe this was said in terms of thier internal machines, not the deliverables.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Won't somebody at IBM please think of the chairs?
We have seen that the open-document-format take hold, and now the big iron is pulling away from MS, shortly after. Given some more time, I think that we will see this trend continue. We will see more and more with ODF, taking MS's place. Even to the point of having document converters, to go from .docto .odf. This also the time to see the movement of the massess to a linux environment. I think you will see tax-programs, et al. moving because of the ODF as well.
I think that there will be a lot of script-style viri as well that will go throuigh everyones documents, ala the excell virus. The only reason that all this stuff didnt happen on larger scale, was because of the different formats.
But if every Joe-Linux Distro includeed a nice easy-top-use office, and all that, it would be easier to switch.
MS will become another smaller company.. It's innovations were in the 90s. Im ure that they will keep up for some time.. But this is a huge financial blow to them.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
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.
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
Most IBM slavelings don't care about windows vis redhat vis suse, if only they would dump Lotus notes client everybody would be a lot happier.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Great news, it's about time that someone started rolling Linux out onto the Desktop in a large enterprise.
:)
Someone has to be the beta tester!
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
>Now look at IBM -- for them to base their business around Vista would make them *completely* under the control of Microsoft.
Note that this applies to All users of Vista, not just IBM.
Just in case you were thinking of upgrading.....
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Did you RTFA? Or even TFS (the fucking summary)?
This is about INTERNAL desktops. i.e, IBM's employees will mostly be using Linux systems to do their day to day work. They can still recommend Windows to clients.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The problem for any corporation updating to Vista is that you rather have to replace most of your hardware along the way as well.
And upgrade your memory. Over on The Inquirer they're reporting that Vista consumes 800MB of RAM while idling. This is absolutely insane to someone who first started using computers in the early 1970's. There just isn't that much stuff that an Operating System should be doing. And yes, that really is 3X XP's current requirements, the thought of which certainly is warming Intel's little heart.
Seems to me if MS wants to keep IBM in the fold they should be offering to buy them all new desktops.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
Point is, Ballmer needs some exercise.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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?
Why do I sense that this will spawn the mother of all BSA audits?
"rsh"? Me strongly thinks you should switch to using "ssh" for that.
As I understand it, the next Notes client will be an Eclipse-platform rich client. Here's an article about it
Cheers,
Ian
It would be nice if there were documented evidence of large enterprise migrations to Linux for the desktop. I work in an I.S. capacity for a very large health care organization, (7B/year, >10,000 employees), recently the head of Information Systems has been hitting up our group to find ways to reduce costs. I wanted to point to the obvious use of using alternative operating systems but at this point too much of our infrastructure depends on niche software, such as Remedy and PVCS Tracker for tracking large projects and I.S. requests.
Additionally there is a very heavy use of MS-Office, especially Word and Excel. It would be valuable to see what the large-scale effect of drop-replacing an alternative Office product such as OO.o has on an a large business -- especially with regards to training.
I think IBM's idea of migrating in piecemeal is a good one.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
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.
It seems that the new IBM thing, Workplace has Notes running natively.
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
Too bad the better OS is owned by one of their competitors (and partners), otherwise I'd give them 1 year before they switched to Solaris (much like Oracle did after flirting with linux).
Yah, but even though I'm pretty much one of those "Speak English or Die!" types when on American soil, I still have no problem with getting content in German from a German server.
Just when I go to Mexico, I do my best to speak Spanish (It's very bad, I read Spanish much better than I speak it), and don't expect signs to be in English down there.
I just wish we got the same consideration when Mexicans come to the US. (There's a billboard a couple blocks from my house that is in 100% Spanish. Complete bullshit if you ask me. As you said "This is America!")
But, getting pissed because a German web server does not have English content is assine.
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.
IBM is aiming for platform agnostic software client, side with anything new based on the the Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) using Java as with IBM Workplace. The client side applications they produce will run on Linux, AIX, Mac OSX AND Windows
Close to 100% of desktops will play .mpgs, and they'll work on all major platforms with ease. You don't have to use "non-standard" codecs.
.wmv...It's like having an alternative browser site that won't render in Firefox unless you tweak thirty options.
The fact that it was a Linux-related event makes it even more ridiculous that they'd choose
Yeah! windows sucks! Microsoft sucks!
Go for the xbox instead...
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Well, opengl on nvidia cards works extremely well. ATI cards are still a bit of a problem, but the situation is getting better.
I'm using the (cvs) development versions of dri and glx, and the improvement over the older drivers is substantial (in the order of 10-40% framerate increase depending on what you are running), not to mention initial rv300 support, which means newer cards become an option without needing the utter crap that ATI produces as drivers for Linux.
If you were referring to the official binary drivers from ATI, again, those are a pile of crap.
Somehow I imagine IBM and Lenovo will work out a deal to purchase PCs without Vista. You don't think IBM buys desktop systems and laptops from Dell, do you?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Please mod down this FUD
Vote for Pedro
And wmv doesn't play on AMD64. I know you can install the Windows win32 codecs in x86 systems (even though it's *bad*) but not on 64 bit players.
Or you have to setup 32 bit players with attached 32bit libs and the whole thing just becomes a huge mess...
Well, I'll just trust them that some IBM guy said whatever they did he said. Or something.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The AC flamewars always seem to have the most wit.
I just checked again, and couldn't find the char string "linux" in any of their product pages.
You cannot have looked very hard. Try starting from here.
Or are you looking at the Lenovo ThinkPad pages? IBM doesn't make desktop PCs or laptops anymore.