IBM

IBM Began Buying Red Hat 20 Years Ago

Glyn Moody — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 12:30:00 +0000

How Big Blue became an open-source company.

News that IBM is buying Red Hat is, of course, a significant moment for the world of free software. It's further proof, as if any were needed, that open source has won, and that even the mighty Big Blue must make its obeisance. Admittedly, the company is not quite the behemoth it was back in the 20th century, when "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". But it remains a benchmark for serious, mainstream—and yes, slightly boring—computing. Its acquisition of Red Hat for the not inconsiderable sum of $34 billion, therefore, proves that selling free stuff is now regarded as a completely normal business model, acknowledged by even the most conservative corporations.

Many interesting analyses have been and will be written about why IBM bought Red Hat, and what it means for open source, Red Hat, Ubuntu, cloud computing, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon, amongst other things. But one aspect of the deal people may have missed is that in an important sense, IBM actually began buying Red Hat 20 years ago. After all, $34 billion acquisitions do not spring fully formed out of nowhere. Reaching the point where IBM's management agreed it was the right thing to do required a journey. And, it was a particularly drawn-out and difficult journey, given IBM's starting point not just as the embodiment of traditional proprietary computing, but its very inventor.

Even the longest journey begins with a single step, and for IBM, it was taken on June 22, 1998. On that day, IBM announced it would ship the Apache web server with the IBM WebSphere Application Server, a key component of its WebSphere product family. Moreover, in an unprecedented move for the company, it would offer "commercial, enterprise-level support" for that free software.

When I was writing my book Rebel Code: inside Linux and the open source revolution in 2000, I had the good fortune to interview the key IBM employees who made that happen. The events of two years before still were fresh in their minds, and they explained to me why they decided to push IBM toward the bold strategy of adopting free software, which ultimately led to the company buying Red Hat 20 years later.

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Best Linux Marketing Campaigns

Bryan Lunduke — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 13:00:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

I have long held the opinion that one of the biggest problems holding back Linux-based systems from dominating (market-share-wise) in the desktop computing space...is marketing. Our lack of attention-grabbing, hearts-and-minds-winning marketing is, in my oh-so-humble opinion, one of the most glaring weaknesses of the Free and Open Source Software world.

But, in a way, me saying that really isn't fair.

The reality is that we have had some truly fantastic marketing campaigns through the years. A few even managed to break outside our own Linux-loving community. Let's take a stroll through a few of my favorites.

From my vantage point, the best marketing has come from two places: IBM (which is purchasing Red Hat) and SUSE. Let's do this chronologically.

IBM's "Peace. Love. Linux."

Back in 2001, IBM made a major investment in Linux. To promote that investment, obviously, an ad campaign must be launched! Something iconic! Something catchy! Something...potentially illegal!

Boy, did they nail it.

"Peace. Love. Linux." Represented by simple symbols: a peace sign, a heart and a penguin, all in little circles next to each other. It was visually pleasing, and it promoted happiness (or, at least, peace and love). Brilliant!

IBM then paid to have more than 300 of these images spray-painted across sidewalks all over San Francisco. The paint was supposed to be biodegradable and wash away quickly. Unfortunately, that didn't happen—many of the stencils still were there months later.

And, according to the mayor, "Some were etched into the concrete, so, in those cases, they will never be removed."

The response from the city was...just as you'd expect.

After months of discussion, the City of San Francisco fined Big Blue $100,000, plus any additional cleanup costs, plus legal fees.

On the flip-side, the stories around it made for a heck of a lot of advertising!

IBM's "The Kid"

Remember the Linux Super Bowl ad from IBM? The one with the little boy sitting in a room of pure white light?

"He's learning. Absorbing. Getting smarter every day."

When that hit in 2004, it was like, whoa. Linux has made it. IBM made a Super Bowl ad about it!

"Does he have a name? His name...is Linux."

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Linux and Supercomputers

Bryan Lunduke — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 13:00:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

As we sit here, in the year Two Thousand and Eighteen (better known as "the future, where the robots live"), our beloved Linux is the undisputed king of supercomputing. Of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, approximately zero of them don't run Linux (give or take...zero).

The most complicated, powerful computers in the world—performing the most intense processing tasks ever devised by man—all rely on Linux. This is an amazing feat for the little Free Software Kernel That Could, and one heck of a great bragging point for Linux enthusiasts and developers across the globe.

But it wasn't always this way.

In fact, Linux wasn't even a blip on the supercomputing radar until the late 1990s. And, it took another decade for Linux to gain the dominant position in the fabled "Top 500" list of most powerful computers on the planet.

A Long, Strange Road

To understand how we got to this mind-blowingly amazing place in computing history, we need to go back to the beginning of "big, powerful computers"—or at least, much closer to it: the early 1950s.

Tony Bennett and Perry Como ruled the airwaves, The Day The Earth Stood Still was in theaters, I Love Lucy made its television debut, and holy moly, does that feel like a long time ago.

In this time, which we've established was a long, long time ago, a gentleman named Seymour Cray—whom I assume commuted to work on his penny-farthing and rather enjoyed a rousing game of hoop and stick—designed a machine for the Armed Forces Security Agency, which, only a few years before (in 1949), was created to handle cryptographic and electronic intelligence activities for the United States military. This new agency needed a more powerful machine, and Cray was just the man (hoop and stick or not) to build it.

Figure 1. Seymour Cray, Father of the Supercomputer (from http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-history-seymour-cray-s-mind-worked-at-super-computer-speed/289683511

This resulted in a machine known as the Atlas II.

Weighing a svelte 19 tons, the Atlas II was a groundbreaking powerhouse—one of the first computers to use Random Access Memory (aka "RAM") in the form of 36 Williams Tubes (Cathode Ray Tubes, like the ones in old CRT TVs and monitors, capable of storing 1024 bits of data each).

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IBM

Carlie Fairchild — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 12:16:49 +0000

by Carlie Fairchild

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 beta available on IBM Power Platform

John Grogan — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 17:24:42 +0000

by John Grogan

Two open source titans put their rings together and joined forces to announce that Red Hat Enterprise Linux v7.1 beta is now available on the IBM Power Development platform. Last month Red Hat announced that v7.i beta supported IBM Power Systems based on little endian mode. Today, it is available and ready to use on the platform directly via download as well as at IBM Innovation & Client Centers worldwide.

According to IBM, this announcement demonstrates their aggressive pursuit of offering a smart, viable alternative to commodity servers. These new solutions optimize Linux software on POWER for Big Data applications, enabling the improved performance that enterprises expect from Linux virtual machines.

According to Doug Balog, General Manager of IBM Power Systems, today’s announcement is all about simplicity. “As the most open server platform in the market place, IBM Power Systems is making it as simple as possible to handle today’s biggest data center challenges with access to industry innovations focused on getting the most value from data.” As part of that, making Red Hat Enterprise Linux v7.1 available on the IBM Power Platform in little endian mode removes application portability barriers, while offering access to an even greater ecosystem of Linux applications.

With v7.1 beta available from several different sources, ISVs, in-house and open source developers have an opportunity to access and test the beta on their own, with additional toolkits created specifically for the Power community. You can test your own applications on this beta with support for Power Systems based on little endian mode in one of these three simple ways:

Visit the Power Development Platform (note: you will be asked to register for a PartnerWorld login if you do not have one already).
Request an engagement at the IBM Client Centers.
Visit the IBM Innovation Centers site to request access to the two major U.S. centers in Cambridge or Silicon Valley or to any center near you (there are more than 40 centers located around the world).

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Jean Staten Healy: IBM's Worldwide Linux Strategy

Chase Crum — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:00:00 +0000

by Chase Crum

In October of 2000, IBM CEO Louis Gerstner announced that the company would investing $1 billion in Linux development. This announcement came off the heels of two substantial developments in the industry. Google, unknown at the time, appeared with Linux servers in 1998, and Dell announced they would begin pre-installing Linux on select servers in 1999. A few years later in 2004, Big Blue made a formal declaration of sorts in a series of television commercials that culminated with a commercial that aired during Super Bowl XXXVIII, announcing their commitment to a partnership with the Linux community. While intended as a signal to their competitors and the market at large, the message had an unexpected effect on an unexpected audience. It was a celebration heard round the world. The underground community that was beginning to evolve around the Linux operating system had received a shot of notoriety in the arm. The global community of corporate giants had just validated the movement with this one very public endorsement. Then, just as quickly as it had happened, there was silence.

I shared this nostalgic moment with Jean Healy, Director of IBM Worldwide Linux Strategy during an interview I was granted while attending LinuxCon in Boston. Over the course of an hour, both Jean and Sean Tetpon (Global Communication Manager, IBM) discussed where IBM has been, and what they have been up to. As it turns out, they've been pretty busy.

On the global front, IBM has positioned themselves as one of the largest international tech companies to fund developments in emerging economies. In 2006, IBM announced their decision to devote an additional $6 billion dollars to their operations in India, on top of the nearly $3 billion they already invested in the years just prior to that. In 2008, IBM announced the establishment of its Banking Center of Excellence in Vietnam. The project laid the groundwork for financial institutions to develop a core banking service using open source technology.

Partnerships with both Red Hat and Novell, both of which have designed their own Linux platforms for IBM's server product line, have enabled IBM to lead an aggressive open source campaign resulting in large scale implementations for Bank of Russia, Boston University, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the University of Arkansas, Deutsche Rentenversicherung Baden-Wurttemberg, and a multitude of other venues.

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