The Sikh Geek

This is not new but Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems CEO, has a blog post entitled “Momentous Day for Solaris”. IBM is going to OEM Solaris on its x86 System X Servers. Schwartz is pointing to “choice” and when you look at what IBM System X servers support today then you have Windows Server, Linux (Red Hat & Novell) and now Solaris. So, if you’re an organisation running a load of commodity Intel based servers which servers are going to best protect your investment. Sun has seen a bit of a resurgence in Solaris since it opensourced Solaris in the form of OpenSolaris. I think this is a clever move by both companies. It is good for IBM where Enterprise customers want to move away from expensive Sun hardware running Solaris onto commodity Intel Servers and it is good for Sun where Enterprise customers are considering IBM Severs running Linux.

UPDATE

In the interest of fairness, the HP Proliant Servers support the same range of OSes and in fact have a compatibility matrix for Debian and Oracle EL (in addition to Red Hat and Novell SUSE). Cool!

Looks like things are hotting up!

After the recent formation of IBM’s Integrated Partner Team (IPT) which has been focused on channel development in the SMB space for servers and storage, IBM look like they are stepping up a gear. I recently received an email via PartnerWorld from Ravi Marwaha (GM IBM Global Business Partners), which essentially said that IBM would be combining software products and services in an attach strategy to their hardware specifically for the SMB Market. In the email it says the SMB segment is the fastest growing market for IT with growth of 6.7% year on year and valued at $487 billion worldwide.

I’ve said for a long time that IBM is the only realistic competitor to Microsoft in the SMB Market with the products and services to match it in things like messaging, collaboration and systems management. If I were IBM, I’d start by getting an offering based on Domino Server/Lotus Notes and make it extremely affordable and easy to install combined with Tivoli Systems Management. It’ll be interesting to see what offerings they actually come out with and whether they can actually get their head around small businesses! I think the penny might be dropping for IBM, that Microsoft has stolen a big march on them in SMB.

I know how much these two companies like each other

That’s a good question? It’s something that an article over at The Register asks. In fact it could be broadened out to ask why not chose FeeBSD or OpenBSD? What it shows is that there is real choice out there. So when I previously said that Microsoft should open source Windows, this is not something which is without precedent for a major vendor. Sun open sourced Solaris for its x86 OS and created Open Solaris and enjoyed a bit of a rebirth and it has more recently open sourced Java. In reality the battle so far has been between Linux taking market share from various versions of UNIX, moving towards commodity Intel based servers. Ubuntu is showing some interest being generated on the commercial Linux side but it’s all funded by a wealthy benefactor in the form of Mark Shuttleworth. So, are you going to bet your business on the good will and deep pockets of a single person? My view is that you’re better off sticking with a commercial Linux vendor like Novell, Red Hat and running it on supported hardware platforms such as IBM, HP or Dell which all support these distros. It’s not going to be free as in “free beer” but you’ve got some form of insurance for your business. 

 The IBM PowerNet Conference is on 17th May 2007 starting at 4.00pm at Westminster Central Hall. I was about to delete this email and decided to look at its contents a bit more carefully and realised that this might actually be worth attending. The line up looks good and Simon Woodroffe is presenting which should be good fun as he was at the recent FSB National Conference that I attended. This is a great opportunity for networking as well. The agenda is as follows :-

Agenda

Jonathan Murray is Microsoft’s Worldwide Technology Officer for the Public Sector and has a post as to why he thinks IBM is making objections to Open XML becoming an ISO standard. This is interesting as I posted about maybe ODF wasn’t neceassrily the panacea that perhaps I had originally thought and Dave Overton added his comments to that discussion. Jonathan’s opening remarks are absolutely true and you can apply these to any company.

“I have written in the past, that the one of the most important things to look at when evaluating a company’s actions is the set of unspoken motivations driven by the company’s fundamental business model.”

It’s certainly true that IBM uses parts of OpenOffice/ODF for its products such as Workplace Services Express which is the equivalent of Sharepoint Services, so I guess they have some vested interest in it. So does that mean Microsoft is not being altruistic here as well?

This explains why Microsoft is hesitant in engaging with IBM (from my personal point of view). Microsoft and IBM are not really the best of friends historically. It’s a shame because IBM does some great kit which has to run Microsoft OSes and use other Microsoft Technologies. However, HP has been engaged within the Small Business Specialist Programme for a while but I’m one for having multiple vendors engage with the Community because we are “IT Consultants” so should be able to chose the best solution for the customer. I know it’s not as simple as that but as with anything in life there is always some politics at play!

Novell and IBM have brought out a new offering which is a mix and match approach of hardware, operating system and some middleware. Here is what you get :

• IBM System X or Bladecenter Hardware
• InfoPrint 1532n Express
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server v10
• IBM Websphere Application Server Community Edition
• IBM DB2 Express-C Database
• Likewise Management Suite

Okay, so what applications are you going to run on it? May be you’ll just code up your own groupware solution to run on the application server! What CRM system are you going to deploy that will use DB2 Express-C? Hmmm, starts to get tricky doesn’t it? Oh! and what about an intranet site with document management that integrates with your Office Productivity suite? Don’t be silly, what small business would want that!

This is what frustrates me, is that Novell and IBM will just throw a load of technologies together and say here you go we’re providing you with all the basic plumbing, but sorry you’ll have to pay our enterprise license fees to get any of the good stuff like Domino Server/Lotus Notes, Tivoli, etc. They have the products that functionally still outperform Exchange Server/Outlook but just not for the small business market. I want to have a real choice between SBS 2003 and a Linux based solution!!