Q&A: Carol Stafford, IBM worldwide vice president of Linux sales
Category Linux
From vnunet.com: Q&A: Carol Stafford, IBM worldwide vice president of Linux sales
Interesting article from IBM on how they view their Linux strategy. A quote of interest to me...
Q. So you disagree with Microsoft that Linux is only a server product?
A. Our strategy had always been the server. But what we are seeing this year is that our customers are forcing us into the desktop. They are trying it, they're doing it. IDC thinks the Linux desktop will grow by 30 per cent per year. We have 30,000 Linux desktops in IBM. What we are telling customers that want to do is to segment their users. Some people can easily use Linux, particularly single-function users - people such as bank tellers and weather forecasters.
We have people who want to isolate their users and only have them do email and one or two functions. Those are easy to change. If you have major users of Microsoft Office, what's the point? In IBM we think that by the end of 2006 we might have 50,000 or 60,000 Linux desktops.
There are a lot of options now for desktops and we will have our own Lotus Workplace, which is a server managed client.
From vnunet.com: Q&A: Carol Stafford, IBM worldwide vice president of Linux sales
Interesting article from IBM on how they view their Linux strategy. A quote of interest to me...
Q. So you disagree with Microsoft that Linux is only a server product?
A. Our strategy had always been the server. But what we are seeing this year is that our customers are forcing us into the desktop. They are trying it, they're doing it. IDC thinks the Linux desktop will grow by 30 per cent per year. We have 30,000 Linux desktops in IBM. What we are telling customers that want to do is to segment their users. Some people can easily use Linux, particularly single-function users - people such as bank tellers and weather forecasters.
We have people who want to isolate their users and only have them do email and one or two functions. Those are easy to change. If you have major users of Microsoft Office, what's the point? In IBM we think that by the end of 2006 we might have 50,000 or 60,000 Linux desktops.
There are a lot of options now for desktops and we will have our own Lotus Workplace, which is a server managed client.
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