Validation of Linux......
IBM looks beyond servers with Linux plans
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 21, 2000, 4:00 a.m. PT
Q&A IBM's strategy for using Linux can be summed up in two sentences: Today, the
server. Tomorrow, the world.
It's been a year and a half since IBM welcomed Linux onto its computers and a few months
since it announced Linux would spread across the entire server line. Now, IBM wants to have a
place in the nascent movement to spread Linux to small electronic devices, the head of IBM's
Linux efforts said.
"We have a whole suite of (software) that will run on tiny little
things," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology
and strategy at IBM. But while companies such as Lineo, I-Logix,
LynuxWorks and MontaVista work on bringing the core of Linux to
these gadgets, IBM will focus on higher-level software such as
components for Sun Microsystems' Java, IBM's DB2 database
software or IBM's Websphere e-commerce software.
IBM plans not to sell that software directly but rather to license it to
other manufacturers, who will use it as part of their own products,
Wladawsky-Berger said.
In the meantime, however, IBM shares the belief with Dell
Computer, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard and most Linux
sellers that Linux is best for servers, the networked computers that
run Web sites, send email and manage corporate inventory. IBM
today announced one such deal, in which the Weather Channel's Weather.com site is
replacing Sun servers with IBM Intel-based servers to send out Web pages.
Sun servers, however, will remain in use in the back end of the Weather.com site, where
computing demands are higher, he said.
Wladawsky-Berger discussed these and other plans in an interview with CNET News.com.
CNET News.com: How much is the Weather.com deal worth?
Wladawsky-Berger: The value of the agreement is over $1 million. That's the total amount,
including hardware, middleware (and services).
Is IBM interested in Linux for computing devices other than the server?
Absolutely. We will work with the community that's making Linux an embedded operating
system for Internet appliances. We have a whole suite of middleware, such as DB2 Everywhere
(database software) that will run on tiny little things.
The nice thing about Linux is that by having the operating system on an Internet appliance as
in servers, it makes it very reasonable to take a lot of the technology for servers and desktops
and move it to Internet appliances.
A while back we announced that our speech recognition technology will be available on Linux.
We ported it, and now people can build Internet appliances that include it.
We would be happy to open-source technology in our research labs...on what are some of the
most important requirements in the future for an embedded operating system. Our Almaden lab
is working on intelligent watches. The No. 1 problem is the damn battery. The watch is small,
but you have to wear a backpack to carry the battery.
But the money right now is in Linux servers?
It's in the servers. We're making sure all our platforms support Linux, from (Intel-based)
Netfinity to (mainframe) S/390. Linux compatibility with AIX (IBM's version of Unix) is coming
out late this year. You can take a Linux application and recompile for AIX with just about no
changes.
And Linux is now running on IBM's upcoming Power4 chip? Did Linuxcare help with
the work? (The Power4, due in IBM servers in 2001, has two CPUs built into a single
chip.)
We were able to do it quickly. One of the nice things about working with open systems is you
can get help from many, many people. We work with Linuxcare and the major (Linux)
distributors all the time.
What do you think of the fact that much Linux development is a collaborative effort
including several companies?
It's huge! It's like the Internet. Once you're in the world of standards, you're no longer dependent
on a vendor. Essentially, the world starts building a more standard infrastructure that anybody
can tap into.
It revolutionizes the whole way software and applications will get supported. It's much easier to
find people who can support Linux.
In the software industry, things were very balkanized. With Windows, Netware, OS/390 (and
many other operating systems), you slice the skills fairly thinly, with people taking special
courses in their particular dialect.
But it's easier if you need someone who speaks (an industry standard such as) HTML or
TCP/IP. You go to any high school and you hire some good computer scientists.
What are the challenges Linux faces?
How fast it will scale up (so it works on powerful, expensive servers with many processors,
which companies can't afford to have crash). In our case, we are mitigating that by supporting
Linux application programming interfaces on AIX and supporting Linux on S/390 so people have
alternative ways of scaling up Linux.
What do you say to Sun chief executive Scott McNealy's criticism that IBM is jumping
to embrace the Linux fad the same way it jumped to embrace Windows NT in the
1990s?
We see Linux as being as much of a fad as the Internet was in 1995. Linux is more like the
Internet in being an industrywide initiative that all vendors can support. That makes it very
different from supporting Windows or other technology that's very good but that one vendor has
all the control over.
With Linux, what makes it different is it's vendor-neutral. It's also a very, very elegant operating
system. (Linux founder) Linus Torvalds and team are some of the top computer scientists in
the world.
IBM has released its JFS journaling file system to the Linux community, one of several
such offerings that could enable Linux computers to reboot faster. Is anything else
coming?
We have a whole list of functions we're ready and willing to open-source. IBM and SGI are
probably the two most aggressive existing vendors in open-sourcing their software.
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