IBM makes play for cross-platform desktop with Open Client

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 13 February 2007 06:57

Technology

In an effort to pull the rug out from under Microsoft's desktop dominance, IBM has released a new corporate desktop suite designed to run on both Linux and Windows, and soon Macintosh.

The new suite will enable customers to choose from a range of Lotus, open source and commercial products, all of which will be capable of running on different desktop platforms. In addition to IBM brands, such as Lotus Notes for email and Lotus Sametime for instant messaging, users will have access to office productivity tools that support the Open Document Format and the increasingly popular Firefox web browser.

Users will initially be able to deploy the IBM Open Client desktop on the two largest commercial Linux for PC distributions, Red Hat Desktop Linux suite and  SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, as well as on Windows. A version for Macs is planned for later in 2007.

IBM claims that its new cross-platform desktop solution has been tested thoroughly on an internal deployment, which supports open standards, and includes Lotus collaboration software products running on Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux Workstation. IBM says it is one of the largest corporate Linux desktop roll-outs to date.

"With the Open Client platform we’ve internally battle-tested a Linux-based solution running Lotus software in one of the world’s largest enterprises based on what customers have been demanding from the market," said Scott Handy, vice president, Worldwide Linux and Open Source, IBM. "We’ve met those market needs by creating a single flexible software stack that only requires one set of investment and one team of developers to run on multiple operating systems.

"Our goal is to provide a flexible open client platform that minimizes customer investment needs and gives users the option to choose the tools they need to do their jobs more efficiently. Increasingly, customers are asking for software and tools that are based on open standards that easily integrate within existing open IT environments, and have enterprise-level security features. "We’ve addressed this market demand by creating an open solution that runs on multiple operating systems with components supported by services from IBM, Red Hat and Novell."

According to IBM, it has pilot sites currently operating at a number of large companies in addition to its own internal deployment and Open Client is currently available.