Free Software Linux

Savio posted a blog entry a little while ago that I missed until now (yes, I’m way behind on my RSS feeds). Anyway, after reading my blog post here on Microsoft’s annual report statements regarding risk from open source, Savio went and looked up what other software vendors state in their annual reports regarding potential business risk from open source software. The results are indeed interesting. Check out Savio’s analysis here:

Here's a nice reminder that open source - in the form of Apache - has been head of the field for more than 12 years, despite what certain companies would have us believe:

In 1996 the World Wide Web was truly in its very early stages. The Olympics took place less than a year after Netscape went public, which many consider the key event marking the transition of the Internet from a research network used primarily by the technical community to the commercial behemoth that it went on to become.

CMS Watch has a pretty interesting content management vendor map (see link below), laid out in the format of a subway map, which makes for intriguing viewing. The diagram is overtly enterprise-oriented, and links vendors according to their scope of operations across various content management arenas like Enterprise CMS, email archiving, DAM, XML management, etc.

It's interesting to note that there are five main 'Hubs' -- extending the subway metaphor -- of vendors who can provide pretty much everything. Microsoft, IBM, OpenText, EMC and Oracle.

Internally within IBM we get to see a number of great adoption statistics for technologies and IBM products. One that has been increasing over time is the usage of Linux virtualized on Power Systems (e.g. POWER6 processor based servers). These systems were always considered “UNIX servers” and that was true in the old days. Today, with virtualization, how do you count a system that has 30% of its capacity dedicated to Linux partitions and 70% to AIX? How about 90% Linux, 10% AIX?  The same trend for adoption of Linux on scalable systems is true for Mainframes as well. These systems offer customers a significant amount of flexibility to match workloads and applications to the best hardware without disrupting the OS, tools, etc.

I was going to write a bit about this MAJOR announcement myself today; but there’s not much point.

Glyn Moody has covered most of the bases in his usual eloquent style.

Did you know that the Enterprise Portal Market is expected to break over US$ 1.4 billion this year? That's what the experts are saying and IBM intends to continue its leadership role in this market. They have just released the latest version of the IBM WebSphere Portal -- v6.1 -- and it looks packed with some really nice enhancements including some Web 2.0 capabilities every portal needs today.

IBMers can get a significant discount off their AT&T wireless plans. I just got an iPhone and switched to AT&T wireless from Verizon. It’s worth the effort to sign up.

http://wireless.att.com/discounts

A list I found on the net of some hilarious error messages. Possibly for the Linux and Unix enthusiast only ;)

On their blogs, Matt Asay and Savio Rodrigues are discussing whether IBM is using open source to diminish competitor margins. I think it is obvious that IBM does this, most notably with its Linux engagement, which is squarely directed against Microsoft (Windows). It is what I call a war over the share of customer’s wallet, and open source plays a major role. The graph below shows how it works.

IBM is positive about the possibility of bringing out its DB2 database-management software under an open-source licence.

Not all vendors out there believe that you should be able to move back and forth between Lotus Notes and SharePoint. AvePoint, provider of SharePoint infrastructure and administration management solutions, continually brings to market migration tools to move content from another product to SharePoint. Their latest migration tool is the DocAve Lotus Notes Migrator.

IBM has officially launched the commercial version of its Lotus Symphony suite of productivity applications, and looks set amount a challenge to Microsoft Office in its enterprise heartland.

Content is a big deal these days, in case you haven't noticed. However, its exponential growth over the years has left some businesses struggling. IBM has stepped up its game by unveiling their integrated approach to helping organizations manage enterprise content with software that helps control and manage all types of content created and shared by workgroups across an organization.

It's called a Business Content Services strategy, and it's designed to help businesses of all sizes cope with the rapid growth of content, including business documents that have been created both individually or collaboratively across diverse and even global workgroups.

Archiving has become a huge deal for organizations large and small as rules and regulations dictate how easily information needs to be available for compliance and legal purposes. So it's no surprise that enterprise content management vendors are incorporating these requirements into their solution offerings.

Oracle, being no exception, has developed the Oracle Online Archive that uses their database as a storage repository for all types of content, including email, files, etc. Seems like they have been down this road before though. Does a "single solution for all content types" work in the real world?

EMC Documentum has released a couple of new products based on XML technology. The products: XML Store and Dynamic Delivery Services are expected to help XML become a driver for any type of content-rich application when integrated with the Documentum enterprise content management system.