The Linux Executive Report from IBM
December 2014
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: December 2014. 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
Cloud Foundry Foundation, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) open source project, has been launched as an independent non-profit foundation.
IBM and Docker have formed a strategic partnership to enable enterprises to more efficiently build and run the next generation of applications on the IBM Cloud and on premises via the Docker open platform for distributed applications.
Red Hat has announced a new collaboration with IBM in enterprise virtualization that enables enterprise organizations running Power Systems to virtualize their demanding mission-critical workloads. The new initiative was explained in a recent Red Hat Virtualization Team blog post.
Watson Analytics, IBM's natural language-based cognitive service is now open for business and available in beta. IBM Watson, which has been developed to try to match the natural language processing abilities of the human brain, runs Linux on Power.
Micro Focus International has announced the completion of its merger with the Attachmate Group. The terms of the definitive agreement were disclosed on September 15, 2014. Principal brands of the Micro Focus Group include Attachmate, Borland, Micro Focus, NetIQ, Novell and SUSE.
Rackspace has publicly announced its affiliation with the OpenPOWER Foundation, and is now an official member. Aaron Sullivan, senior director and distinguished engineer at Rackspace, commented on the company's membership in the OpenPOWER Foundation in a new blog.
Building on the successful launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat has introduced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1. According to a new blog post by the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team, the beta "delivers a number of enhancements and improvements to the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, with an emphasis on ease-of-use, improved manageability, security, and performance."
Linux is the primary platform for the cloud and users consider the operating system more secure than alternatives, according to The Linux Foundation's 2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report.
Linux and KVM Events
The call for proposals for Red Hat Summit 2015 is now open, with registration opening in early 2015. Red Hat Summit brings together thought leaders and executives from across the technology industry to participate in keynotes and sessions on community, innovation, collaboration and customer success. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with Red Hat product teams, hear from expert users at leading customer and partner companies, get hands-on training and learn best practices and strategies for innovation and success.
LinuxCon Japan presented by The Linux Foundation is the premiere Linux conference in Asia that brings together a unique blend of core developers, administrators, users, community managers and industry experts.
The OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community dedicated to accelerating data center innovation for POWER platforms, has announced the first OpenPOWER Summit. The Summit will be held March 17-19, 2015, at the San Jose Convention Center in California.
Red Hat Summit brings together thought leaders and executives from across the technology industry to participate in keynotes and sessions on community, innovation, collaboration and customer success. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with Red Hat product teams, hear from expert users at leading customer and partner companies, get hands-on training and learn best practices and strategies for innovation and success.
SCALE 13X - the 13th annual Southern California Linux Expo - will take place February 19-22, 2015, at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. A Linux and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) expo, SCALE 13X expects to host more than 100 exhibitors this year, along with nearly 130 sessions, tutorials, and special events. Held annually in Los Angeles, SCALE is the largest community-run FOSS conference in North America.
The Linux Foundation has announced its 2015 events schedule, which includes LinuxCon and CloudOpen in North America and Europe, the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, Embedded Linux Conference, Android Builders Summit and ApacheCon, as well as new events for 2015, open source storage and filesystems conference, Vault, and ContainerCon, focused on the rapidly expanding container industry.
The Linux Foundation is launching a new conference, Vault, to bring together the world's leading developers in filesystems and storage in the Linux kernel with related projects to collaborate on continued innovation and education in this important space. Founding supporters of Vault include Facebook, IBM, NetApp, Omnibond, Red Hat, SanDisk, Seagate, and SUSE. The conference will take place March 11-12, 2015, at the Revere Hotel in Boston, MA and will be co-located with the invite-only and exclusive Linux Storage, Filesystem and Memory Management Summit.
Linux and KVM Success Stories
According to an article in CIO Journal by Steven Norton, in an effort to lower software costs and become more agile, Avis Budget Group Inc. will run open-source Linux software over its IBM mainframe. Avis is using an integrated facility for Linux (IFL), "essentially a processor that runs Linux workloads on an IBM mainframe," writes Norton.
Whether your business provides big data and analytics to others, or you use big data and analytics to enhance your own products, research and marketing, it is necessary to have a fast, efficient and reliable infrastructure and architecture.
In 2013, Bon Ton Stores invested in upgrading IT, continuing to update and expand its eCommerce sites, and launching a new mobile site supporting delivery of promotions and online purchasing.
Challenged to do more with less, Dundee City Council identified IT as an area in which it could cut costs. The council consolidated its Oracle Database environment supporting critical services from distributed servers to an IBM zEnterprise BC12 platform, dramatically improving efficiency.
EVERTEC, Inc., based in Puerto Rico, offers a comprehensive suite of services for core bank processing, cash processing and technology outsourcing. EVERTEC relies on IBM zEnterprise EC12 system running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z to support key financial systems and Oracle databases.
IBM Enterprise Linux Server (ELS) can help save software licensing costs, while consolidating different kinds of workloads onto a single server, supporting CIOs in their today's budget challenges. ELS also helps to overcome server sprawl, by requiring less physical servers, less floor space, less energy, with increased flexibility due to IBM z/VM virtualization and simplified management based on IBM Wave for z/VM.
IBM Research and SCA are partnering to create a shared service cloud for the municipalities of New York that is predicted to eliminate 25% of government's IT budget by streamlining applications and connecting siloed municipalities. The IBM mainframe is the platform that New York trusts to host that cloud. In addition to its time-tested scalability, reliability and security, it offers the lowest total cost of ownership — supporting the state as it strives for reduced spending and a smarter, future-ready IT infrastructure.
IBM Business Partner L3C LLP focuses on three ways to help businesses across the UK increase profitability and reduce costs: consultancy, managed services and complementary IT resources. L3C deployed IBM System z servers running Linux to provide companies of any size — including small, midsized and very large enterprises — with scalable, cost-effective, high-performance cloud services.
Government agencies in the U.S., China, and France are improving the lives of their constituents through increased transparency, robust services, and 24x7 access. And while they each differ in their approach to civic governance, they all have one thing in common: the IBM mainframe is their core infrastructure platform.
Although big data promises to dramatically alter the business environment, technology is only a decision enabler.
IBM designed the Enterprise Linux Server from the ground up to add real business value without increasing IT costs. The Enterprise Linux Server's integrated combination of industry leading server and virtualization technologies provide a simple, efficient and trusted infrastructure foundation for businesses with growing Linux workloads.