IBM Delivering An Open Desktop

[engine]

IBM has developed an open desktop product that supports a range of applications, such as email and instant messaging, without the need to run Microsoft Windows.

On Sunday, IBM announced details of its Open Client solution. It incorporates a range of applications, some from IBM's Lotus family, and runs on the two major strands of corporate Linux, Red Hat and Suse, as well as Microsoft Windows and, soon, the Apple Mac.

IBM Delivering An Open Desktop [news.zdnet.co.uk]

[Erku]

It's really cool. The news from IBM reads: Alternative to Vendor Lock-In Can Include Lotus Software; Based on Internal Open Client Deployment and Roles Based Strategy.

[edited by: engine at 5:43 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2007]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[LJCoolB]

Another open source story for IBM is that IBM is giving business partners who use IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) or DB2 Express-C database access to directly tap IBM staff for advice on integration, scalability, testing, and support issues and won't have to pay for the privilege. ( WAS CE is based on the open-source Apache Geronimo project.)

I started reading this thread thinking that this was what it was about. So I just had to add.

[bill]

Is it just me, or does this seem like a solution only for companies that are already locked into a Lotus system for their mail and other office applications?

My company was burdened with Lotus Notes for many years, and it was the biggest bottleneck in the entire company operations. Nobody was sad to see it go.

I guess the big question is, 'do you need to have the Lotus infrastructure in place to make use of this new Open Desktop?'

[coopster]

Good question. I searched the IBM site and found the news release

IBM Offers Customers Freedom of Choice With New Open Client Solution for Enterprise PCs [www-03.ibm.com]
but not much outside of that yet except for some employee blogs that linked out to news articles including this CNET article regarding IBM software geared to reduce PC costs [news.com.com].

[bill]

It really looks like they're giving customers of their Lotus products an alternative to the Microsoft OS.

This doesn't look like an all purpose Linux distro to me.