Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Cents and Sensibility - Kimberly and Friends' Consortium -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gypsees who wrote (102474)	5/3/2000 8:14:00 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 108040

For the Linux doubters.........IBM strategy exec loves Linux By Tom Davey Redherring.com, May 03, 2000 SQUAW VALLEY, CALIFORNIA -- Irving Wladawsky-Berger has a near evangelistic take on Linux, which normally wouldn't be unusual, considering the growing popularity of the free, operating-system software. However, Mr. Wladawsky-Berger is technology and strategy vice president in IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s enterprise systems group. He believes the Linux operating system, currently popular for running Web servers, will widely be adopted over the next few years to run other types of servers and a variety of gizmos and appliances. That view sounds odd coming from the mouth of a high-ranking official in IBM's high-end computing division. The enterprise systems group has long profited from selling a variety of proprietary hardware and operating systems. Mr. Wladawsky-Berger shared his thoughts with a gathering of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and reporters Tuesday at Red Herring's Venture 2000 conference in Squaw Valley, California. He says adopting the popular, open-operating system is a customer-driven phenomenon that's inevitable in the evolution of computing. He compares what's happening to the computer industry's embrace of TCP/IP, the standard for transmitting data over the Internet, which replaced proprietary network protocols and allowed different types of computers easily to exchange data. IBM KNOWS WHAT TIME IT IS "Linux is designed by the most brilliant people in the world and it can run on anybody's platform," he says, sounding unlike a representative of a company that has been promoting obscure operating systems such as the AIX version of Unix and OS 390. He says the market for new sales of Linux hardware, applications, and services will make up for any revenue shortfall as customers turn away from these operating systems. However, IBM isn't abandoning these other operating systems or Windows, Mr. Wladawsky-Berger says. He insists these various operating systems will continue to have specialized uses that won't easily be satisfied by Linux. IBM may be succumbing to the realities of a customer-driven market. "A few times we thought we could lead the market where the market didn't want to go," he says in response to a question about some of IBM's failed efforts, such as its OS/2 operating system a few years ago. "When we had an 80 percent profit on the mainframe, that was fun," he says wistfully, acknowledging IBM will never have the luxury of owning markets as it did in the past. Mr. Wladawsky-Berger's zeal for Linux even spills over into IBM's labs, he notes, where IBM is developing a Linux-based watch with speech recognition.