On September 17, IBM will announce at LinuxCon 2013 that it will invest $1 billion in new Linux and open-source technologies for its Power Systems servers. This announcement comes 12 years after IBM famously announced that it was backing the then unproven Linux with a billion-dollar investment.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said, “The last time IBM committed $1 billion to Linux, it helped start a flurry of innovation that has never slowed. We look forward to seeing how the Power platform can bring about further innovation on Linux, and how companies and developers can work together to get the most out of this open architecture.”
IBM has been moving towards making Linux more important on its flagship Unix/AIX Power Systems over the last year. In May 2012, IBM introduced its first Linux-only Power Systems, the Power 7 rack and blade servers. Then, this year, IBM introduced a new high-end Power Linux system, 7R4 server. This was quickly followed by IBM porting Linux’s native virtualization, KVM, to Power and IBM, Google, and Nvidia founding the OpenPower Consortium to open up the Power chip family to other vendors.
What IBM wants for all these moves, and the $1 billion it will be investing in Power and Linux, is not to convert its existing AIX customers to Linux. Instead, Dan Frye, IBM’s VP of Open Systems Development, said Linux on Power is meant for new big data, cloud computing, analytics, and datacenter customers.[...]
In a statement, IBM fellow and VP of Power Development Brad McCredie said, “Many companies are struggling to manage big data and cloud computing using commodity servers based on decades-old, PC-era technology. These servers are quickly overrun by data, which triggers the purchase of more servers, creating unsustainable server sprawl,” McCredie explained. “The era of big data calls for a new approach to IT systems; one that is open, customizable, and designed from the ground up to handle big data and cloud workloads.”
