IBM Eye

There has been a lot of noise in the blogosphere lately in regards to some comments supposedly made by an IBMer in Germany that IBM will not use Windows Vista - but will move to Linux desktops.

Of course everyone got really excited and is claiming IBM has completely dumped Windows in favour of Linux - and will move all 300,000+ employees to Linux worldwide.

The truth is not quite that exciting (or scary !!).

Some more balanced reports have since come out - especially after a spokesperson denied any such move by IBM … Information Week reports IBM Switches Linux Desktops, But Isn’t Dumping Windows.

I think the IBM spokesperson didn’t really offer much in the way of information about what’s actually happening inside IBM - so let me clarify things from what I see internally. Please note that these are personal observations only and do not represent IBM policy or direction - I may inadvertently make assetions which don’t actually match reality or IBM strategy.

IBM Linux Desktop Client

IBM has had a semi-supported Linux desktop for at least 4 years now - and apparently as many as 15,000 people use it on their machines internally.

There have been several things holding IBM back from a more wide-spread rollout of Linux - lack of a supported Lotus Notes client being the number one item. Notes-under-Linux via Wine has been commonly used, but has not actually been supported internally, nor encouraged.

A mature set of productivity tools has been another limiting factor, and OpenOffice.org has addressed many of the concerns there - but it’s still relatively lacking in functionality compared to MS Office, or dare I say it - Lotus Smartsuite (eeek !!). A lot of the work IBM has done in integrating it into the Workplace Managed Client has addressed some of the issues (internationalisation being one of the main concerns for IBM worldwide).

Most recently, the biggest thing stopping further rollout of the Linux client was simply that they prevented new deployments for over a year while I think they worked out some compatability issues, and finalised the actual distribution that was to be used (there were some licensing and support isses to be sorted). It’s only been in the last couple of months that we have now been able to download and install new Linux clients - with a new distribution based on RedHat Linux.

Notes on Linux

It is only now that we are beginning to see the foundation put in place that will allow a more wide-spread adoption of Linux internally. Notes on Linux is the most critical - however, until the next major release of Lotus Notes (Hannover) is available in a few years time - we have a interim solution which utilises a plug-in to the Workplace Managed Client to facilitate Notes on Linux. This solution is still in beta testing and won’t be fully supported for a while yet - so this is still a bit of a limiting factor, but we are on the right path there.

Workplace Managed Client + Productivity Editors

Of course, the OpenOffice.org based editors built into the Workplace Managed Client will provide an integrated solution on Linux for productivity tools - although I suspect there will be widespread resistance to using these tools for people who have become used to the abilities of MS Office and aren’t flexible enough to adapt. I see this slowing the adoption - but not stopping it … mostly it is just an education exercise, and the continued work IBM is doing in this area will make the experience better as we proceed - so this observation is merely a point in time. Interestingly, the complaints I hear are mainly from sales people who create complex Powerpoint presentations with fancy transitions and other such distracting frippery. The current capabilities of the suite are more than adequate for the vast majority of typical office workers - it’s only IBM’s sales-oriented business that drives (sales) people to insist on the bling

Firefox

Of course, more and more tools are browser based now, and while some of the tools we’ve had in the past relied on Internet Explorer - these are mostly gone, replaced by applications that work just as well on Firefox - which is now fully supported (and encouraged) inside IBM. There are some isolated applications that are still to be migrated, but my understanding is that these are being worked on, and it won’t be long before we have a 100% Firefox friendly environment.

Software Group

Given I work for the Software Group, and indeed for the Lotus brand - we are seeing a lot of effort internally to set ourselves up with the technology to utilise our own products as a corporate solution. We have IBM Workplace Collaboration Services and the IBM Workplace Managed Client deployed to use - on either Windows or Linux. We can get access to the Notes plugins to the Workplace Managed Client for full integration there, and we have the built in OpenOffice.org based editors. We are actively encouraged to utilise this system, and that includes running it on Linux if we are comfortable doing so. There is support and training available to those people not yet fully comfortable with Linux.

Personally I don’t run Linux on my own desktop machine yet - mostly because I haven’t had the time to migrate (and I run too many Windows-only applications on my machine … mostly web and graphic design software, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc), but I do have Linux running on my second laptop that I use for software demonstrations, so I get the best of both worlds in a way.

Vista

There has been no talk about migration to Vista - but I would think it is way too early to consider that anyway. IBM delayed migrations to Service Pack 2 of Windows XP for quite a long time because of compatability issues with some internal applications. I expect IBM will take its time to ensure that Vista does not break any of the thousands of applications utilised across the globe before making a recomendation either way.

One of the key messages IBM promotes to its customers is choice, for example, open standards are about choice - by standardising, you can choose your implementation knowing that it will work with the other software in the enterprise the same way because of the standards. IBM will never stop producing software that supports Windows for as long as we have customers that demand support for it. The same way, customers are now demanding support for Linux - so practically the entire IBM software portfolio and hardware portfolio has been made Linux ready.

Conclusions

I don’t see IBM forcing everyone on to Linux - and even if it becomes the default operating environment, it will take several more years of development to be ready for everyone and all their specialised needs. I’d hope IBM will not renew a global enterprise agreement to use Windows everywhere - rather I’d expect that decisions will be made on an case-by-case basis, or at least on a county-by-country basis … every location has their own specialised applications that might require a particular platform.

So from what I see, IBM is encouraging its staff to move to Linux - but it’s certainly not a move that is happening right here, right now for absolutely everyone. There’s still a way to go I think, before we are 100% ready for the move - but most of the foundation is in place through IBM’s own software portfolio and other complementary technologies that run on Linux too.

I say we give the people a choice - let them decide for themselves which path is better. This is what I see IBM doing both internally, and also for its customers.

By the way - would it confuse things if I mentioned that the same changes we are making to the IBM client-side software portfolio will also allow us to run Mac OSX clients instead of Linux or Windows. Even more choice - cool!