IBM is giving its Linux initiative a high-profile new address and
testing centre.
The company will open a Linux test centre in its Manhattan offices
at 590 Madison Avenue, situated between The Trump World Tower and
Sony's high-rise US headquarters. The facility will offer IBM
customers in the financial services industry a host of resources
for testing applications to run on the open source operating
system, Adam Jollans, Linux strategy manager for IBM's software
division, said.
"This is another step in increasing the momentum of our customers
using Linux," he said. "It will help IBM's customers in the finance
industries deploy applications."
IBM said it has more than 40 financial services industry customers
in the USA that are using its Linux products. About 20 of those are
located in New York, Jollans said.
The Linux Center of Competence, or Linux CoC, will house a test
facility with IBM eServer products and mainframes running Linux and
IBM's middleware. Those middleware products include its WebSphere
application server software and products from IBM subsidiaries
Lotus Development and Tivoli Systems. IBM's DB2 database software
will also be available at the centre.
Customers will be able to use the hardware and software to tune
their internal applications to run on the open source operating
system. Additionally, technical staff from IBM Global Services will
be on hand to evaluate and test applications on Linux.
SuSE Linux, in Nuremburg, Germany, will provide ongoing
installation and technical support for the IBM Linux centre.
Financial software from independent software vendors including
SunGard Systems, J D Edwards, Veritas Software and Sybase that have
been tuned to run on Linux and IBM hardware will also be available
to customers for cross-testing of their applications, IBM
said.
"Applications are absolutely key to Linux being used by real
customers for real tasks, and that's why one of the big focuses we
have at the Linux centre is the involvement of the ISVs," Jollans
said.
The Linux CoC is the first of its kind for IBM's customers in the
financial services industry, the company said. So far it is also
the only one the company has plans to open. It is being backed by
$1m in hardware, software and services investments from IBM. That
is money well spent, Jollans said, adding that the financial
industry has become a big fan of Linux. Traditionally, applications
used by financial services companies have been designed to run on
the Unix operating system.
IBM and other companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, have recently
announced deals to bring major applications used by companies on
Wall Street over to Linux. Last week, IBM said it was working with
J D Edwards to port the company's CRM application to the open
source operating system by the end of the year. HP also recently
made a deal with Reuters Group port its market data system from
Unix to Linux.