December 18th, 2007
Notebook: IBM's Linux desktop installs; Notes evolution; Data center stats
IBM has embraced Linux as its operating system of choice, but employees are
slowly working toward using it on the desktop.
As of yesterday, IBM had 24,190 Linux desktop installations within the company.
That’s out of 372,000 IBMers.
So what’s the holdup? John Walicki, open client architect at IBM, says it’s a matter
of application maturity. As Lotus Notes develops more features for Linux desktop
employees are more willing to switch to Red Hat’s desktop client from the familiar
Windows environment. Walicki added that as long as employees can do all of their
usual activities within Notes–email, messaging and documents–they don’t care
about the operating system.
Just for context IBM doesn’t have any specific policy on Linux desktop adoption and no quota or deadline to migrate more users. Walicki noted that IBM has a role-based PC policy. The data center folks and firmware people will use Linux. Your average cubicle dweller has a choice of Windows or Linux.
Walicki also served up some interesting Linux desktop adoption stats inside IBM:
- IBM had 100% growth of Linux desktop installations in 2006;
- IBM is on track for 60% growth in 2007;
- 20% of the installations are in the software group;
- By geography, 46.7 percent of the desktop Linux installs were in North America, with 7.4 percent in Asia Pacific and 5.7 percent in Latin America. Europe, Middle East and Africa had the second largest group of installs at 40.1 percent.
Lotus Notes meets Web 2.0, Symphony coming to Mac
While folks are debating the merits of Microsoft Office vs. online applications from
the likes of Google and Zoho, IBM may have a more elegant solution. Combine the
two. Walicki demonstrated Lotus Notes with “Web 2.0 hooks,” simple calls to pull in data into documents and spreadsheet.
In his presentation, Walicki showed a spreadsheet that had a roster of names.
Within Notes, additional data such as pictures and biographies were added with a
click. Notes is using Web services to call into enterprise data.
Walicki also noted that Lotus Symphony has had 250,000 downloads thus far and
the third beta of the office suite lands today.
Meanwhile, IBM is working on a version of Symphony for the Mac platform.
Fun with data center numbers
IBM has managed 8,000,000 square feet of data center space over the last decade.
This chart is also telling.
All that consolidation is expected to add up to 40 percent to 50 percent energy savings and $1.3 million a year in savings–even as IBM has doubled its IT capacity.
Also see:
- IBM cooks up internal virtual world for confidentiality, security
- IBM demos ‘On Demand Workplace’; Will Web 2.0 deliver productivity gains?
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Smart Planet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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