IBM expands Linux push on servers

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Exactly the same game as before...: I don't understand your point? Linux doesn't change anything for server/computer vendors. Linux is just an operating system that runs on IBM, Dell, HP, Sun, or company X computers. Before Linux, everyone was trying to sell their computers with Windows or UNIX on them.

In the most common case, Windows was sold with your computer. You didn't make any money on the sell of the OS. You made money by selling better hardware and better service than your competitors.

Along comes Linux and nothing has changed. Well not exactly. Now you the vendor have eliminated an expense (Windows licensing) and can now afford to sell better hardward and/or provide better support while enjoying the same profit margins.

In the case of your home-grown UNIX, you do miss out on the revenue of selling your own OS, but you save big money because you don't need any OS developers. You may still want some to work on the Linux OS, but not nearly as many. You just freed up your developers to work on more interesting things, and produce new and better commercial products (that run on the world's standard OS -- Linux).

You are better off in several ways:

1) You don't have to pay a licensing fee for every server (or CPU) shipped.
2) You don't have to tie your developers up writing your own OS. Just use the free and open Linux OS (or any other free UNIX).
3) Products you develop for your new OS (Linux) can actually be marketted to all of your customers AND all of your competitor's customers (because everyone runs Linux).

It's a win-win for everyone. The hardware vendors win, commercial ISV's win, and the consumer wins.

As far as your point about Dell, Intel-based blade servers are great, but we're not talking about small systems here. These IBM servers are in a class of their own. If you want to bring up the company website, by all means, use blade servers. If you want to bring up eBay.com, you use IBM servers (and that's just what eBay.com did!).

-Bryan; Posted by: prime21 Posted on: 02/24/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use