HP considers open-source services

(continued from previous page)

and smoke.

There, she was involved in HP's effort to equip such servers with an HP-created variant of the Debian version of Linux. Some companies, such as MontaVista Software sell carrier-grade Linux, but HP fared better with its own product.

"We've been most successfully rolling our own," a product called Debian TE (telecommunications extensions), Martino said.

"We don't have our own (Linux) distribution," she hastened to add. "It's kind of a gap-filling strategy. We provide features and support...Everything we do submit back to open source."

In her job, Martino hopes to improve sales of blade servers using Linux. At IBM, Linux is used more often on blade servers than it is compared with the server market overall, but Windows is disproportionately popular on HP's blade servers, Martino said.

"That's an area we're focusing on. I think we're missing an opportunity to take more share there," she said. "There's more we can do with Linux on blades. I think things need to be done around channel enablement and positioning."

One area HP isn't pushing actively is Linux on desktop computers, Martino added. "It's something we're watching closely to see when and where the uptake is...I see that as much more an emerging area," she said. If it does take off, HP's personal systems group can "turn on a dime" to take advantage of it, she said.

JBoss partnership
HP also announced Tuesday it expanded its partnership with JBoss, which makes an open-source application server product of the same name for running Java software on servers.

In 2004, HP began a reseller agreement to sell JBoss' core software. At the time, it also began a similar partnership with the open-source MySQL database software, the Sendmail e-mail server software, and Symas' OpenLDAP directory server software.

Now HP expanded the JBoss deal so it also includes a fuller suite of JBoss software, the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). The partnership extends both to Linux and HP's version of Unix, called HP-UX.

HP also sells consulting services relating to the software to help customers design and install JEMS systems and migrate to them from other technology, HP said. The JEMS services are expected to be available in late February.

Novell includes JBoss software in its Suse Linux Enterprise Server product, but the top seller of Linux, Red Hat, has chosen a different application server product, called Jonas, overseen by a consortium called ObjectWeb.

HP has a "strong partnership with Red Hat," Martino said, adding, "We will explore how to do things higher up the stack with them" as Red Hat seeks to sell higher-level software in addition to the core operating system product, Martino said. For example, regarding Red Hat's directory server software, she said, "They're interested in us doing more."

However, Red Hat's priorities don't always align with HP's, as in the case of ObjectWeb's Jonas application server. "I haven't heard a lot of demand for that at all," Martino said. "JBoss is the name we hear most frequently."