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Blow your house down

Selling the Linux desktop is a multi-faceted strategy. "There is no analogue to Microsoft in the Linux world", says Bob Sutor, IBM VP for Linux and open source. "There are several major players. People expected huge 50 billion dollar companies to come in and engage head-to-head with Microsoft, but that's not the type of business engagement it is."
Bob Sutor, IBM VP for Linux Instead, the hegemony of Microsoft on the desktop market is being challenged from the cloud, on the desktop and from different devices, "in different ways, with different points of value, for different reasons, from different economic points of view. If you think of it from a business perspective, Microsoft is being hit on many different flanks, so it isn't just one frontal assault."

Microsoft's dominance of the desktop "is being chipped away from this side, from that side, and from underneath with embedded Linux, led by different players with different strengths, chipping away at the front door, the back door, the side doors, and the roof."

In this equation Android, Moblin and Chrome OS, Google, Intel and Nokia, are as important to the success of Linux on the desktop as IBM, HP, SLED, Ubuntu or Fedora. Linux is leaking into the enterprise at all levels, and open source technologies, virtualisation and the move towards cloud computing are breaking down the old reliance on proprietary lock-in, applications on every device and data fragmentation. "That is why I'm extremely optimistic that as time goes by you will see breakthroughs", says Sutor.

Blue Skies

Dependence on a desktop hegemony that is beset with interoperability issues looks increasingly dated. The pressure for open standards and a more heterogeneous mix of technologies in the enterprise is coming not only from governments and users, the free software community or the European Commission, but also from the technologies themselves. We live in an increasingly polyglot world, where every device must be able to speak to every other device, and those that fail to speak the common language are left behind. It is important that there are common reference points that make interaction possible. Standards give us the means to talk to one another in a heterogeneous environment, whatever applications, operating systems or computer language we use. "If I can't talk the language of your proprietary format, I can't hear what you say", and conversation becomes impossible.

The new consensus on the importance of open standards is illustrated by the increasing adoption of ODF by governments and other large organisations. IBM has been an important supporter of ODF. And Microsoft, in Sutor's view, "seem to have taken a difficult approach to it."

"Rather than doing the right thing, the consistent thing, and following what the community was doing, they just decided to be difficult about it, for their own reasons. But it'll sort itself out. These things always take years."

"In one sense it has been a major victory for ODF, given all the previous posturing, that it is (on Microsoft systems) at all. Given community involvement and the evolution of the standard, ODF is the future. It's what people want, and it'll get better week by week, month by month, year by year. I tend to think in terms of 4 or 5 year plans for these things, just because of the network effect. But these things always happen sooner than I think."

"To carry the analogy a bit further, this door will break down before that door breaks down, but nevertheless there'll be pressure," says Sutor, "and we are supporting all the people who are breaking down the doors, as well as the people in the house!"

Next: What can you give us?

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