100 Companies Test IBM’s Open Desktop
When IBM announced its so-called Open Client Solution earlier this week, The VAR Guy wondered: Do any customers actually want open solutions that easily run across Windows, Linux and Mac OS? The answer, according to Adam Jollans, a Linux strategy manager at IBM, is “absolutely yes.”
Roughly 100 businesses are testing the technology, which allows developers to quickly write cross-platform applications that run natively on Windows and Linux (Mac OS support is planned for later this year). One likely tester is PSA Peugeot, Europe’s second largest car manufacturer. Back in January, Peugeot announced that it had signed a multi-year deal with Novell to deploy Linux desktops and servers.
But Novell never disclosed Peugeot’s intended mix of Windows and Linux desktops. No worries: IBM’s Jollans gave The VAR Guy the answer. The automaker intends to keep Windows on about 50,000 desktops while deploying SuSE Linux on about 20,000 desktops. The story doesn’t end there. Peugeot hopes that IBM’s Open Client Solution will allow the company to run Lotus Notes and other mainstream applications across both Linux and Windows.
The open desktop technology could be of particular interest to VARs that are seeking to write applications for key vertical markets. Higher education — where Linux, Mac OS and Windows all are common — certainly comes to mind.