March 1st, 2005
Inside IBM's open source strategy
IBM’s open source strategy is pretty simple when you come right down to it.
Linux, and open source, will unite IBM’s past with computing’s future.
That sounds like it was written by someone in IBM marketing, but it’s easy to explain with one story "ripped from the headlines" over at News.Com.
Here it is. IBM is contributing to develop Zend Core, combining its Cloudscape database server with Zend.Com’s PHP scripting tools.
Here’s the rest of the story. Cloudscape is the server for DB2, IBM’s old database format. By working with Zend, DB2 users get professional tools that will let not only let them migrate their oldest databases to the Web, but provide quick user interfaces for desktop tools based on those databases.
DB2 users might want to check out IBM’s technical roadmap for this transition. If you’re an enterprise customer, with a long computing history, this looks like very good news indeed.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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