IBM's Handy on managing Linux
Scott Handy started with IBM 1983 as a systems engineer and went on to sales, marketing, and strategy positions covering large accounts, channels, small and medium business, and IBM products for Windows NT, Sun Solaris and OS/2 Warp. Now as VP of Worldwide Linux & Open Source for IBM he is one of the main public faces articulating IBM's open-source strategy. We caught up with Handy at the sidelines of the recent LinuxWorld Open Solutions Summit when he talked about how the industry giant manages to support a vast product portfolio for Linux and open-source initiatives.
CNME: Can you tell us how the internal Linux rollout at IBM is going?
Handy: We first started talking about it maybe four years ago. What we learned was that it actually was going to be a problem for our support group, our help desk, to have a different set of software on the Linux side than they did on the Windows side. So it was very important to figure out that we needed to standardise on a single programming model for the two environments and Eclipse came out to be the most robust cross platform environment that we came up with. By rewriting Notes and SameTime I think we've achieved with the Open Client [desktop management software] exactly what we needed.
So we really for a while there had to slow down. We were more focused on getting to a common software stack for Windows and Linux than we were on increasing the number of Linux users. And now the big drive within IBM is to get everybody on Open Client. There's less concern about which OS you're on and in fact we're not gonna cap it, we're gonna see what happens with our users. We don't have a target but I expect Linux usage will go up. IBM Research seems to prefer Linux, the China Development Lab prefers Linux, [and] we have whole geographies that seem to have at least a slightly greater inclination for Linux than other areas -- like Brazil, like India.
What we learned was that it actually was going to be a problem for our support group, our help desk, to have a different set of software on the Linux side than they did on the Windows side.
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Immortal little article
I cannot believe that I have seen this article about 30 times in the past 3 weeks. It's a quick, 3-minute interview, but the media just won't let it go. Republishing endlessly, everywhere... *sigh*
Sorry, I had to throw a fit.