IBM and friends promise "Microsoft-free" desktops for worldwide market

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 06 August 2008 13:10

Business IT - Open Source

"The combined power of Eclipse and Lotus - offered in a stable and secure Linux environment at less then half the cost of the equivalent Microsoft offering - will create a new ecosystem for solution providers and developers, and set new standards in value-for-the-money for the customers."

In the UK, Avnet UK - the country's largest IT distributor - offers a package featuring Novell's SUSE and IBM's OCCS through its local partners.

"Novell is excited to partner with IBM to drive desktop innovation and deliver the open collaboration client solution to enterprises worldwide," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell.

"The unique combination of IBM's Lotus software powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop enables enterprises to strengthen security, improve flexibility, and dramatically lower costs compared to Vista. In addition, deployment is made very easy with a seamless one-click installation feature."

At least a dozen distributors around the world already offer OCCS powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to their resellers.

Canonical is taking a different approach, deciding instead to redistribute Lotus Symphony through its repositories. Symphony 1.1 should be in the repositories by the end of this month, with version 1.2 expected by the end of October.

What about that "billion unit" claim? Please read on.