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Microsoft is about to lose another important client of its Windows operating system, an announcement made by an IBM representative at the Linux Forum 2006 said.According to Groklaw.com, Andreas Pleschek, head of open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe, said during a presentation that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. This means that IBM will not switch to Vista
Need confirmation from something more reliable than the Softpedia article or the Groklaw Article [groklaw.net] it's based on.
Anyone else hearing this rumble, or is it just the Penguin Heads chest thumping again?
Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista.
Could be just in one territory (like Germany), or could be a demonstration project to show others the way. "If a corporation as big as IBM doesn't need Windows, you don't either...."
It's hard to imagine the NOBODY at IBM will have Vista -- so many of their customers will use it, that some at IBM will need it to understand and recreate customer problems.
IBM employees using Linux desktops are switching to Red Hat Inc.'s version of the open-source operating system, but the company denied reports that it's planning to dump...Windows...The number of Linux users within the Armonk, N.Y., company is about 5 percent of IBM's 329,000 employees...
"The Linux plan is for people who have a need for Linux, as part of their jobs, will use it," Kaplan said. "We have not made Linux available to the general employee population and there are no plans to do that."
Andreas Pleschek, head of open source and Linux technical sales across Northeast Europe, was erroneously quoted this week as saying IBM had cancelled its Windows contract...
Details here. [crn.com]
They are still "evaluating" Vista. If they do not know if they are going to upgrade to it, what will they use instead? They can hardly carry on using XP indefinitely.
It may all be a threat to get better pricing from MS; they may be planning to switch instead of buying Vista but may not want it know yet.
I would bet on a bit of both - switch those you can to Linux gradually while using the threat ("look Bill, we have switched lots of people already, we can easily do the rest") to get a better deal from MS for those people who need Windows for some reason.
The sheer mass of installed windows machines at IBM would make it difficult for them to switch over entirely to Linux.
