Just had to comment this due to all the strange assumptions/misconceptions made about IBM (and used as arguments which thus fail...). And also a great excuse to post my first slashdot reply....
Fact 1! IBM had a revenue of $81.2B in 2002, making $1.5B on Linux not that much money (but still money in a slugish market...)
Fact 2! the revenue - margin - profit was divided as follows: Services - $36.4B - 26.3% - $9,6B Hardware - $27.5B - 27.1% - $7.5B Software - $13.1B - 84.4% - $11.1B Other - $4.3B - 52.7% - $2.3B So saying that IBM is a hardware/software/services company is all wrong. They are all of that, an IT *SOLUTIONS* Provider. Granted the strategy lately has been focus on services (and ~160k of the ~300k employees are in the services division).
Fact 3! They spent a great deal of time/money on OpenSource/OpenStandards contributions, last number I heard was 2-300 fulltime developers and about 1500 with the "part timers", mostly working with Apache, Linux, Eclipse, Java and W3C. And also important, IBM spends $5B a year in *basic* research alone, the same amount as the 10 next big spenders (also won the most approved patents 10 last years) which drives the whole IT business forwards, like them or not.
Fact 4! The so called big battle for the desktop is a battle for $28.4B with $11.9B which is M$ numbers for 2002 (I know this number is "wrong" as it doesn't acount for M$ server software (pulling down) and Other desktop OSes (pulling up) but still...) or 35% of IBMs revenue (now add the revenue of Sun/HP/Dell/Oracle/Sybase/CA etc. and work out the Desktop to IT market percentage...). Linux is more important in fighting M$ in the low range server market than the desktop market $-wise.
Fact 5. They have anounced their on-Demand strategy ($10B/5year effort) where Linux is one of the four pilars to make it happen GridComputing - AutonomicComputing - "OpenStandards/OpenSource" (Linux/ip/http/webservices/xml/java...) - Integration So Linux is important in a number of ways to IBM.
Fact 6. Yes, IBM is listed on the NYSE so their out to make money......
Not a fact but...: Yes. IBM is embracing Linux (for good and bad?) because it's important in a number of ways to them, desktop wars not beeing top of the list, most listed in the other posts though. And Yes IBM has a record of not dropping OSes quickly so AIX will not disapear quickly, but given the onDemand strategy it might in time, they all might in time?
Fun fact: You can run a Linux compiled application directly on AIX through linux compatibility support (don't know how good it is though.
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Just had to comment this due to all the strange assumptions/misconceptions made about IBM (and used as arguments which thus fail...).
And also a great excuse to post my first slashdot reply....
Fact 1!
IBM had a revenue of $81.2B in 2002, making $1.5B on Linux not that much money (but still money in a slugish market...)
Fact 2!
the revenue - margin - profit was divided as follows:
Services - $36.4B - 26.3% - $9,6B
Hardware - $27.5B - 27.1% - $7.5B
Software - $13.1B - 84.4% - $11.1B
Other - $4.3B - 52.7% - $2.3B
So saying that IBM is a hardware/software/services company is all wrong.
They are all of that, an IT *SOLUTIONS* Provider. Granted the strategy lately has been focus on services (and ~160k of the ~300k employees are in the services division).
Fact 3!
They spent a great deal of time/money on OpenSource/OpenStandards contributions, last number I heard was 2-300 fulltime developers and about 1500 with the "part timers", mostly working with Apache, Linux, Eclipse, Java and W3C. And also important, IBM spends $5B a year in *basic* research alone, the same amount as the 10 next big spenders (also won the most approved patents 10 last years) which drives the whole IT business forwards, like them or not.
Fact 4!
The so called big battle for the desktop is a battle for $28.4B with $11.9B which is M$ numbers for 2002 (I know this number is "wrong" as it doesn't acount for M$ server software (pulling down) and Other desktop OSes (pulling up) but still...)
or 35% of IBMs revenue (now add the revenue of Sun/HP/Dell/Oracle/Sybase/CA etc. and work out the Desktop to IT market percentage...).
Linux is more important in fighting M$ in the low range server market than the desktop market $-wise.
Fact 5.
They have anounced their on-Demand strategy ($10B/5year effort) where Linux is one of the four pilars to make it happen
GridComputing - AutonomicComputing - "OpenStandards/OpenSource" (Linux/ip/http/webservices/xml/java...) - Integration
So Linux is important in a number of ways to IBM.
Fact 6.
Yes, IBM is listed on the NYSE so their out to make money......
Not a fact but...:
Yes. IBM is embracing Linux (for good and bad?) because it's important in a number of ways to them, desktop wars not beeing top of the list, most listed in the other posts though. And Yes IBM has a record of not dropping OSes quickly so AIX will not disapear quickly, but given the onDemand strategy it might in time, they all might in time?
Fun fact:
You can run a Linux compiled application directly on AIX through linux compatibility support (don't know how good it is though.