The Linux Executive Report from IBM
April 25, 2012
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: April 25, 2012. A monthly summary of important trends and market research, case studies and information about IBM's Linux initiatives of interest to senior management.
Linux News
2012 will be a big year for KVM, Jean Staten Healy, director, WW cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, writes in a new blog: There is a tipping point at which a disruptive technology takes off in the marketplace, displacing other technologies that may have previously been believed to be firmly entrenched. For open source solutions, this occurs when there is a compelling reason, such as cost, to switch from proprietary technologies, after it has been proven that the new technology delivers enterprise compatibility, ecosystem support, and the high quality and reliability required for enterprise adoption. We have already witnessed that tipping point with Linux - and we are seeing that same story play out now with KVM.
IBM has introduced new value-priced Power Systems and PureFlex System offerings to help customers exploit the cost efficiency of Linux and virtualization for business-critical workloads. IBM PowerLinux Solutions offer deep integration of new Linux-specific POWER7 processor-based hardware with industry-standard Linux software from Red Hat and SUSE for analyzing Big Data, managing industry-specific applications, and delivering open source infrastructure services.
IBM introduced a new family of "expert integrated systems" called IBM PureSystems, which features built-in expertise based on IBM's collective experience running customers' IT operations. IBM PureSystems' scale-in design integrates and optimizes all of the critical components required in a data center - system networking, storage, compute, management, etc. - and provides for a single-view management system. Out of the box, all PureSystems family members are built for the cloud, enabling corporations to quickly create private, self-service cloud offerings that can scale up and down automatically.
Nineteen leading technology companies have announced their plans to become Platinum or Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation, an independent and long-term home for OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system. IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, as well as others based on the principles outlined in the published mission and framework.
Scott Handy, vice president, STG Strategy and Business Development, PowerLinux, IBM, lays out the value proposition for IBM PowerLinux solutions in his new blog post: On April 24, IBM announced IBM PowerLinux solutions, built on a new Linux-only family of servers. These two-socket servers - one rack-mount and one compute node - run industry standard Linux, and have been tuned to run key emerging workloads like big data and open source network infrastructure. With these new offerings, IBM is taking Power's well-known strengths in scalability, flexibility, and security and making them available to customers that might not previously have thought of Power as an option. Now, quite simply, IBM is taking pricing off the table.
The Linux Foundation will hold its Enterprise End User Summit April 30-May 1 at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. The event will bring together high-performance end users with the highest level Linux community developers CTOs, architects, IT representatives, and kernel developers to advance the features most critical to using Linux in the enterprise.
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, released its latest report on kernel development. The report covers work completed through the Linux kernel 3.2 release, with an emphasis on the releases made since the last update to the report in December 2010 (2.6.36 to 3.2). The report was authored by Jonathan Corbet, LWN.net; Greg Kroah-Hartman, The Linux Foundation; and Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation.
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is a gold sponsor of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2012, which will take place May 21-22 in San Francisco.
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