Why Linux with IBM

Why is Linux the smart choice for business partners?
Because the Linux®market opportunity is significant and growing, customers are increasingly demanding industry specific Linux applications, and IBM is committed to Linux.
Linux is versatile, reliable, scalable, and does not create the lock-in where a single vendor determines what your prices and features should be.

1. Opportunity:

Growth in the Linux marketplace continues to soar.

According to IDC, Linux has been and will continue to be in the foreseeable future, the fastest-growing server operating system, and organizations in virtually every industry — from finance, to retail and distribution, to telcos and service providers — are embracing its reliability, low cost and performance.

2. Choice:

Linux represents a significant profit opportunity for IBM Business Partners.

Whether it be replacing edge of network servers, consolidating and virtualizing onto fewer larger servers using IBM's industry-leading virtualization technology, or deploying Linux for business-critical workloads, you can offer your customers a choice of IBM hardware platforms and IBM Linux enabled middleware to help them build flexibile, resilient and secure on-demand infrastructures.

With Linux and other open standards based products, you can offer a broad range of options, and in many cases reduce your customer's infrastructure costs, improve price/performance and free up precious IT budget to spend on your higher value services.

3. Innovation:

By helping your customers move to a more flexible, open standards based infrastructure you can concentrate more of your efforts on innovating higher up the stack and delivering true business value services.

Proposing new business applications or implementing business critical applications on Linux become more attractive if the base infrastructure is well established and consistent across any and all platforms your customer's IT departments need to maintain.

Deployment and workload distribution options using Linux give you the flexibility to optimize your customer's IT costs and help you develop long term partnerships that can increase your profitability.

4. Competitive Advantage:

Surveys of large and meduim enterprises indicate that over 60% either have or are planning on deploying Linux. If you are not talking to your customers about Linux, chances are somebody else is.
Investing in Linux skills expands your capabilities, provides your customers more choice, allows you to exploit a technology trend that is here to stay, and approach compettitive customers that may have been previously beyond reach.
Furthermore, IBM offers the most comprehensive set of Business Partner initiatives to enable developing your Linux skills, assisting you find new opportunities and supporting you both pre and post sales. To learn about IBM's 2005 Business Partner Linux initiatives, please review the attached presentation or further explore this Web site.

1. Vision:

Gartner Group has rated IBM as having the clearest Linux vision, commitment and viability among the company's closest competitors.

2. Comprehensive Solutions:

With a powerful combination of vision and proven solutions, IBM and its Business Partners are uniquely positioned to grow with Linux.

3. IBM is Committed to Helping you Grow:

With the Linux resources and initiatives of IBM Partnerworld, you can tap into the vast Linux skills, solutions, applications and services available across the IBM Business partner community to successfully build and grow your customer’s on demand businesses built on Linux.