January 25, 2008 10:40 AM PST
IBM snuggles up with Ubuntu
It's easy to overlook IBM's announcement that its Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony suites will run on Ubuntu. I think this would be a mistake. IBM is not a dumb company. It's not in the habit of wasting resources. For IBM to be partnering up with Ubuntu says something about the enterprise mindset on Ubuntu.
Where it's going, that is.
"We're doing pilots with customers now," [IBM] said. "Some of the requests came from big companies" with as many as 100,000 users that are interested in moving to Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. The other thing we are seeing is some interesting patterns evolving here. It starts with a very small company looking at Linux, and then there are really large companies that are starting out small with 500 [Linux desktop] users, then moving up to 2,000 or more. That is the pattern we are seeing."
Ubuntu is ready for prime time enterprise adoption when IBM says it is. It's saying that now. Watch this space.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
In the same article, IBM calls 2008 the year of the desktop. Here is the quote:
"All the stars are lining up," he said. "Everybody has been saying that since 2001 except IBM. We never said that, but we are saying that now."
Could Linux really achieve the critical mass it needs to start exploding in growth? I think the time is near.
Tristan
Are Notes & Symphony for Ubuntu going to be OPEN SOURCE free products?
I know they call it, Open Collaboration Suite, or something.... But does "open" mean OPEN SOIRCE?
Or are they proprietary products?
Bruce Wagner
http://brucewagner.com/blog
- by at78rpm February 15, 2008 7:35 PM PST
- It sure would be nice if IBM could support Ubuntu on its ThinkPads. (I know, Lenovo makes them now, but...) I have a Z60m that has a thumbprint reader and lots of gizmos that are designed for Windoze, but they don't work in Ubuntu. Sort of a waste of plastic buttons.
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