Corporate IT directors were the prime targets of suppliers
at the LinuxWorld conference in New York last
week.
Jack Messman, chief executive officer of Novell, told delegates
that this year Linux would become viable for business users, both
on the server and desktop.
"This is going to be the year Linux goes mainstream on the
enterprise server, and soon thereafter, the business users - not
just the technical users - will begin the transition to Linux-based
desktops," he said in his keynote speech.
Novell, which completed its purchase of SuSE Linux earlier this
month, unveiled a number of Linux-related products and announced it
was joining the open source Eclipse consortium.
Open Source Development Labs, the non-profit group set up to push
adoption of Linux, announced the creation of a Desktop Linux
Working Group to explore and develop the use of the operating
system on business desktops.
The group said the project would begin by identifying a broad set
of Linux desktop uses and templates, which will then be used to
create specifications and reference implementations.
Computer Associates was bullish about Linux for the enterprise. Sam
Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief architect of CA's Linux
Technology Group, suggested that Linux was now in its evolution
where the IBM PC was in 1984.
IBM said it would be pushing its enterprise software running on
Linux as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows NT operating
system.
Microsoft is discontinuing support and security patches for Windows
NT at the end of this year, which means that nearly two million
customers will have to develop a migration strategy.
IBM revealed details of a programme that offers business partners
free migration classes and some discounts on software and services
for users moving to IBM software running on Linux.
IBM's classes will be offered worldwide and will cover migration to
IBM hardware and software for database management, collaboration,
security, systems and network management, web and application
serving, and file and print serving.
Despite Linux distributors such as Novell, Hewlett-Packard and Red
Hat offering indemnification to protect users from legal challenges
relating to Linux, IBM said it would continue to remain on the
sidelines.
IBM said SCO's £1.6bn intellectual property lawsuit over the use of
Unix code in Linux has no basis and therefore indemnification was
not needed.