IBM and Linux our biggest threats

IBM and Linux combined represent a threat and inspiration as Microsoft Corp drives into enterprise computing, top company executives said yesterday.

Computing giant IBM wages war against Microsoft in lucrative corporate accounts while Linux, the low-coast threat to Windows, wins supporters in fertile developer communities.

Speaking at Microsoft's 2002 Financial Analysts Day yesterday, executives heading-up Microsoft's developer and enterprise server divisions spoke with frankness. They also revealed product and strategic initiatives to combat the double-headed threat.

Eric Rudder, senior vice president developer and platform evangelism, set the tone. "IBM is our greatest competitor. In the way they sell products and compete in corporate accounts," he said.

Paul Flessner, senior vice president .NET enterprise servers, called IBM and Linux a "formidable" challenge. "It's not just IBM alone, it's not just Linux alone," he said.

He said it had been a tough year for server companies. "The number that scares me the most, is that the number of servers shipped [this year] was down," he said.

However, Flessner articulated Microsoft's response to Linux. "Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."

Flessner said IBM has a "slight lead" in e-business infrastructure, with WebSphere running on Linux. A second threat to Microsoft is Tivoli, and Flessner hinted Microsoft is gearing-up a systems management product. "It's solid competition. We are working to get in there," he said.

He believes the planned Windows. NET Server will issue a further challenge. New features for the operating system, scheduled for the end of 2002, include wizards to improve configuration, management and deployment of Windows .NET Server and Active Directory, and better process isolation so processes cannot knock out applications.

Rudder said in 2003 Microsoft must ensure .NET becomes the preferred architecture for application development. To achieve this, Microsoft must convert millions of developers using existing versions of C/C++ and Visual Basic onto .NET versions of the company's languages. These .NET languages underpin Microsoft's servers.

One way is to build greater support in the community for Microsoft's programming languages, tools and servers. Microsoft believes Linux has cracked this nut, and explains Microsoft's ASP.NET Web Matrix Project - a community development tool for building ASP.NET Web applications available for free download.

"We need to build a vibrant and healthy developer community. That's the lesson Linux has taught us. Having people to help. Knowing where to get questions answered," Rudder said.

Rudder also revealed more details of future versions of Visual Studio.NET, highlighted on Wednesday's .NET Briefing Day. Visual Studio.NET Everett will for the first time include the .NET Compact Framework for developers of mobile applications. Delivery is scheduled for the time-frame of Windows .NET Server.

Visual Studio.NET Yukon, will feature an improved integrated development environment (IDE), "community support" and integration with SQL Server enabling developers to build database features like stored procedures in languages like C++, Visual J# and TSQL, used in SQL Server.

Visual Studio.NET Longhorn is scheduled to ship with the Longhorn operating system, supporting a new storage system and user interface.

Microsoft plans budget and staff expansion to woo corporates. Research and development will grow more than 20% in 2003 to $5.2bn, with $2bn going on server technology.

The company will increase its employee base by 5,000 during the coming year. This includes a 15% increase in account management, to reduce the number of accounts staff manage, and a 47% increase in sales people. Also planned is a $200m worldwide TV advertising campaign.

© ComputerWire

However, Flessner articulated Microsoft's response to Linux. "Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."

Bwwhaaaaaaaa! Microsoft spin! Not counting the cost of hardware, I can create a Linux box to be any one or all of the following: File server, print server, fax server, web server, FTP server, firewall, router, Email server, Network Management server, and many other functions - WITHOUT PAYING A DIME.

I started with Linux back at 0.99. In my testing lab I have have recorded 24 Linux kernal panics - mostly due to testing Alpha hardware or software. Two were from me "just trying out" a command line option (the /dev/hda drive did not support the -X34 command option on the /sbin/hdparm command in both cases).

Of my production networks, I have had two "hard downs". One occured when high winds blew part of the roof off and it rained in the computer room over night. The other was a lighting strike to the building which sent a charge up the ground.

The ONLY other times I have had a Linux box go down was to move it or when I took it down to reconfigure it.

I cant tell you how many times I have had to reboot Windows. Oh and for you Win2K fans, my laptop "lost" it's Win2K kernal file - thank goodness I have Linux. At least I can get some work done while I'm trying to find my Win2K CD (just moved, everything is still in boxes).

Just my .02

but I have to reluctantly admit WIN2K is a decent product.

Finally. After, what, 10 years of promises to deliver a decent product?

My Samba/DHCP/NFS/caching DNS server has been up for 170 days and that was due to a power outage that lasted longer than the UPS. It has not been rebooted for other than power outages since I built it 20 months ago. Before the power got it, it was still running a 2.2 kernel from the Redhat 7.0 install.

And it's not some Dell Poweredge or anything. It's a Tyan dual PII with 256MB of no-name RAM, a 5GB IDE drive to boot off of, a pair of mirrored 18GB SCSI drives and a Adaptec 2940 SCSI adapter. All of the parts in it except for the case and power supply I bought off of eBay.

Windows 2K runs pretty good on conservative, well-tested hardware. That's why it runs so well inside of VMWare and on high-end, well-tested name-brand servers. VMWare emulates plain vanilla, well-tested hardware

Replace your primary domain controller with a home-built box, just to test for uptime. I dare ya. ;)

IBM doesn't need their own distro. They just put their own employees to work hacking on the Linux kernel. IBM hackers have contributed the JFS filesystem and lots of patches already. I hear that there is a AIX compatibility module in the works.

If IBM built their own distro, they would have to maintain it. By using RedHat or SuSE, they just sell support and have a few programmers work on things that are good for IBM.

IBM gets a OS that will run on any box they sell, from Big Iron down to laptops and they don't have to keep a staff of programmers on hand.

The Linux distros get the backing of one of the finest service organizations in the world.

Why screw up a good deal by trying to own it?

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