IBM offers a 'Microsoft-free' desktop
IBM wants corporate customers to cut the cord with Microsoft.
The tech pioneer is launching a Linux-based collection of virtual-desktop applications that run on a server without the need for desktop hardware--or Microsoft software, according to a report on Wednesday evening by The Wall Street Journal. The Linux-based software package, which is available now, runs on a back-office server and is accessible to customers on thin clients, the paper reported.
The Virtual Linux Desktop ranges in price from $59 to $289 per user, depending on level of software and service desired, according to the report. IBM estimates that the software package could save corporate customers up to $800 per user, when compared with the cost of maintaining Microsoft's Vista operating system, Office suite, and collaboration tools, the newspaper said.
IBM is counting on the prevalent economic pressures to help make its "Microsoft-free" suite more appealing.
"Deploying your technology this way is going to save you something more than 50 percent of your total costs," Jeff Smith, IBM's vice president for open source and Linux, told the Journal. "As customers face an increasingly challenging economic situation, they're looking at everything they're spending money on."
Cost aside, however, corporate customers may not be ready to embrace an environment where their data is stored centrally instead of locally.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
http://sites.google.com/site/eqtransit/etica visita este espacio !!!!
I don't see IBM getting much customers from this. Corporations would rather fudge numbers in their accounting books then to go with a cheaper solution.
They also STILL won't believe that gas prices were being fixed by speculators during the 150$ barrel of oil times.
If you can replace a PC with a "Internet Device' or Dumb Terminal you save money. Not as much as going wiht open source though...
why not? their money is in a bank somewhere. why not data?
A few are probably still using the software for the old mainframes that did it that way - because they're too cheap to upgrade even in a 'good' economy.
Re: "IBM, Bankers at Odds Over OS/2 Migration Path
Vendor advises OS/2 users to switch to Linux, but ATM makers are leading push to Windows"
Also,
"August 11, 2003 (Computerworld) -- IBM, which will end support of its aging OS/2 operating system after 2006, is recommending that OS/2 customers migrate to Linux instead of Windows.
But there's little likelihood that IBM's advice will be widely heeded. The last bastion of OS/2 computing, branch banking, is locked into a Windows migration strategy because the major manufacturers of automated teller machines are going the OS/2-to-Windows route.
Wells Fargo & Co. began its migration from OS/2 to Windows three years ago, said Jonathan Velline, senior vice president of ATM banking at the San Francisco-based bank. That move was prompted by the expectation that IBM would drop OS/2 support, as well as by the need to upgrade data encryption methods , support electronic check-image processing and provide audio services for visually impaired users, Velline said. "
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,83884,00.html
Code-Base OS/2 will always be (remain) Code-Base OS/2. (Cool).
Just the savings on no longer being the only one constantly trying to keep all that data secure would be a benefit.
Re: "Concerning the issues with 1-2-3 that are talked about in the documentation you gave me, most of the issues are related to converting files between older and newer versions of product and converting documents between Lotus and Microsoft. Anytime a file is saved backwards or saved with an older file format than the format the file was created under, such as saving a 1-2-3 , 97 file for Windows 95 into a WK1 format for DOS, then naturally we are expected to loose certain features due to technology and features that are present now that were not present 8 - 10 years ago. Similarly, if we try to convert a file from Lotus into Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; however, there are several differences in both programs and these differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual file design and format.
In one of your letters you made mention of the @IRR and @ERR functions in the 1-2-3 product. By design the @IRR (notably "absent" in Open Office) will calculate the Internal Rate of Return; where the @ERR is used in conjunction with other formulas, posted was an "ERR" showing an error was received in the calculations. As far as I can see in the program I cannot find an @ERR function that will allow us to calculate an Economic Rate of Return"
When this is gotten right we can all begin to "Party Like It Is Rocking New Year's Eve 1998"!
IBM isn't bitter... they are better.
They know that the business software environment is about function, not empty promises.
-R
I've been porting Outlook to OS X. What A PITA. Revers would likely be easier.
Why are we going back to dumb terminals and main frame time-sharing?
@Remo: $89 gets you Novell's OpenExchange, which can translate between existing Exchange servers and native Linux clients very nicely, or just replace Exchange outright.
As for OpenOffice and its alleged unsuitability, what makes everyone so sure that IBM hasn't modified it to need and taste?
Me, I'll wait and see what IBM has on offer (You don't want to know what it costs to do Citrix for a largish install base... this could get interesting).
In our organization we use Citrix to connect to Lotus Notes. We would love to have Lotus Notes on our desktop but Citrix helps save some licensing costs I guess.
The Citrix response is so slow that a 100 KB email takes 30 seconds to open. You might say its a 'bandwidth' issue, but we are already using a gigabit network! Then again, you enter one two commands too many or click in the wrong places with your mouse and Citrix starts coming up with its annoying beeps and errors (Invalid menu handle, The Red box of death). That requires us to suspend our work for around 1/2 hr till the connection is reset.
Then you have the mainframe. No fancy eye-candy. Just the back background & green foreground screen in Courier New format.(unlike the bandwidth hungry real-time desktop in Citrix). Just one press of the 'Enter' key ('Ctrl' key for the 3270 loyalists :-)) and even though the Big Blue box is thousand miles away, the system responds in the blink of an eye.
As IBM says it, Mainframe - The World's Fastest Dinosaur.
http://www.sun.com/desktop/sun_ray_clients.jsp
at 4w/client and you can save a lot of power too...
IBM might make great hardware, but when it comes to software (baring a very few exceptions) its offerings are the worst in the market.
If the world economic situation is going to finally move enterprises off PCs and onto more secure and cost effective desktop solutions, the lions share of the market may move to these more mature and proven vendors. Of course there will always be those enterprises that bleed IBM Blue.
Former VP Worldwide Sales for Wyse Technology 1997 - 2001.
And where is our OS/2 freind? Now THAT is an MS free environment, and see how well that worked for them.
- by robvme December 4, 2008 6:06 PM PST
- Microsoft offers an IBM free backend...this is supposed to be news? Everyone knows that IBM has had a Linux lab and that Linux would never have survived without being proped up by the likes of IBM, who by the way, is scared to death of the GPL and makes sure that all development of those products are completely separated from other IBM software. The real question is, how much of IBM services will enterprise customers have to by to get these products to interoperate as well as Microsoft Stack? Nothing is free, not Linux, not IBM, and not Microsoft....ever have a free puppy? Not really free.
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- by IBMblows December 6, 2008 10:42 PM PST
- robyme is right. IBM might "give" this away, but in true, typically fashion, they will rip their customers off and provide ***** support, if any at all. They will continue to promise the moon and deliver you to ashes. Anyone who has ever dealt with them knows this. If only people would stop buying into their stupid commercials & do their homework, we could finally be rid of this dinosaur. The only reason they are even still around is because corporate execs don't have the balls to admit to their stockholders that they made a serious mistake by signing contacts with them in the first place. IBM continuously causes nothing but problems.... and nickels and dimes their customers for everything. Microsoft products might not be free, but they always work and if its broken, they won't charge you to fix it.
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