Dick Sullivan delves into IBM's focus on open-source initiatives

BECAUSE MANY INDUSTRY heavyweights have begun supporting the Linux OS on their products, we were curious to see what IBM's plans are. Kevin Railsback, West Coast technical director at InfoWorld, spoke with Dick Sullivan, vice president of integrated solutions marketing at IBM's Software Group, based in Armonk, N.Y. Sullivan gave us the lowdown on IBM's future Linux and open-source initiatives for an overall sense of IBM's stance on Linux

InfoWorld: How do you see Linux's role in the enterprise, and how do these new releases support that role?

Sullivan: We want Linux to move into the transaction space and into the mission-critical application space, which is why database and Web application serving is so important. We think that where DB2 Universal Database and Websphere Application Server really come in is in their ability to move into the next level of applications -- the Linux platform.

InfoWorld: Are there fundamental issues with Linux that need to be addressed?

Sullivan: Enterprises tend to be heterogeneous in nature in that they have multiple operating systems. I think that we're going to see that continue for the foreseeable future. The promise of Linux is that it is a cross-platform operating system so it has the potential to be the unifying operating system across the different sets of hardware platforms that customers have.

[But] it does need some additional capabilities that are provided in some of the mainframe operating systems, like OS/390 and other Unix operating systems around scalability, parallel systems, [and] hierarchical storage management.

InfoWorld: What added benefits do these releases offer businesses that choose the Linux platform?

Sullivan: DB2 and Websphere Advanced Server are leading database and Web application serving products in the marketplace. Both have proven to be able to run with enterprise transactions on the database side and database-oriented transactions in the Web application server side. What we do with Websphere, as an example, is take all of the experience that we've had with CICS [mainframe query system] and distributed CICS in distributed transaction serving and extend that to the Web. We also have a significant set of foundations like MQSeries for messaging and workflow types of applications as well as products like the Websphere EveryPlace Server. You'll see us do other things in that same arena where we will contribute [OSes] like AIX to the open-source community and assist in incorporating that into Linux for it to become more enterprise scalable.

InfoWorld: What prompted your investment in the Linux platform?

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