IBM and Red Hat Sign Major Support Agreement

gnudot writes: "Red Hat announced this morning that they have entered into an agreement with IBM to provide support services for the entire eServer product line. This includes zSeries, iSeries pSeries in addition to the xSeries (What no qSeries? or 7Series?) which is already supported. Here is the story on Yahoo."

Humorless

[Anonymous Coward]

That press release is humorless [lostbrain.com]

Now *this* is the way Open Source should work...

[Bonker]

IBM is doing what they do best... making damn good hardware.

Redhat is doing what they do best... making a damn good server OS. Apparently, it's better than AIX. At least it's costing IBM less, which is a good goal as well. IBM gets Free software to run on its high price enterprise-class servers. Redhat gets paid a lot by a huge company for support, and incidentally for further development. They also get a lot of prestige... and more penguins spraypainted on sidewalks, I'd imagine.

Everyone else gets the fruits of IBM's and Redhat's labors in the form of GPL and other open-license software. Win-Win-Win

Rock on!

[uslinux.net]

This is precisely the sort of thing that will help ALL Linux-related companies. IBM wants to dethrone Microsoft. IBM still supports NT/2k/whatever for their customer base, but they increasingly recognize they can't win at this alone. RedHat wants to sell software - not just RedHat Linux, but things like Interchange and Stronghold. Being able to sell hardware with packages like Stronghold ready to roll right out of the box is a major boon for IBM and RedHat. It also helps IBM because they don't have to roll their own Linux distribution to sell their hardware. Big Blue has finally seen the light.

Re:sidenote...

[Misha]

that's because the deal is a big deal for RHAT but a far lesser deal for IBM.

If you think about it, IBM could probably do better with AIX. The price drop simply reflects that in the short term there will be AIX to Linux migration issues which may cause IBM extra money spent. But in the long run, it is a better deal.

Re:not just support and services

[frank_adrian314159]

How many of these servers does IBM sell?

Tens of thousands per year. More important still is the installed base of these machines, which run into the hundreds of thousands. To be honest, most of the installed base of these machines don't currently run Linux, being split among OS/390, OS/400, AIX, and (of course) Windows. But many of them might be willing to switch. Even more, if Red Hat does a good job

As to why IBM would spin off Linux support, it's probably a good deal for them. Good S/390 and AS/400 people don't come cheaply in the best of times and many may not be well disposed towards learning Linux (which they rightly perceive as a less reliable and stable OS than the native alternatives). The Intel box guys have a hard enough time dealing with Windows. The training costs assciated with this venture would be hideous.

Now, if you sell the software support business to Red Hat, you can still sell hardware support, still write software for the platforms, and still sell the iron. Plus, you've laid off the risk of Linux failing and the cost of hiring new people to an independent entity. Looks like a good deal to me, if I'm IBM. Looks like a good deal all around...

Re:Now *this* is the way Open Source should work..

[autopr0n]

Apparently, it's better than AIX.

I doubt that it's better then AIX (technicaly) all around, but what it is an OS with growing marketshare and way better compatablity, which means more software. AIX is never going to do anything to microsoft, Linux is.

Re:And I STILL say IBM should do a Linux distro!

[3am]

IBM's already had their anti-trust difficulties, and entering the desktop/workstation/lower-end server OS arena probably wouldn't look good from that perspective (different (imho) from creating their own proprietary OS, but....)

anyway, i understand you point. personally, i'm torn between 1.) having IBM create/buy their own distro and create a huge chunk of legitimacy for Linux with huge/rich customers of IBM (and in turn attract more developers) and 2.) that an IBM distro could be disastrous for Debian, SuSe, et al. - most businesses that have a choice between IBM products and non-IBM products would choose IBM if they had the $.

(i totally agree with you about management fascination with all things IBM - have you ever seen one looking at a decked-out ThinkPad? although, honestly, i get a little misty eyed myself :) )

this is great news for the linux community

[ultrapenguin]

it's nice to see great companies such as IBM and RedHat cooperating together to bring linux to the masses. Finally our vision of Linux on every desktop is getting closer and closer.
With latest release of 2.5 kernels, Linux is the best choice for both desktop and server.