EDS draws anti-Linux battle lines

Stan Beer
Friday, 18 March 2005 19:00

IT Industry - Development

Multinational IT services juggernaut EDS has lately been blowing its trumpet and making a big song and dance about its so-called EDS Agility Alliance. What it has really done, however, is align itself against the forces of Linux.

While EDS has positioned the "alliance" as some of world's largest IT companies "working together", what it essentially boils down to is that EDS will do what it always has done: tender for services in the enterprise space using the companies on its list of technology partners. Looking at a list which contains Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, it is hard to imagine that these companies would be content to divide up the enterprise software pie in a genteel fashion and work together to provide customers with a seamless technology platform.

That said, however, there is something far more significant at play in the new EDS alliance strategy. That something was spelled out this week at the Asia Pacific launch of the alliance. At the launch, EDS stated quite clearly that Linux has no part to play in its plans.

With that statement, EDS has thrown down the gauntlet and effectively drawn up the battle lines in what is shaping up to be a clash of the IT titans. In one corner, EDS has gathered together the rabidly anti-Linux forces of Microsoft and Sun (despite its claims to be pro-Linux). In the opposing corner are no less than the world's two largest IT companies IBM and HP, supporting emerging Linux providers such as Red Hat and Novell. Companies such as Oracle, SAP, EMC and Dell, which EDS claims as part of its alliance, really have their feet in both camps.

When it comes down to tin tacks, in any large tender in which say IBM GS went up against EDS, there is not one of the major vendors who would not happily work with both companies. In the case of IBM GS or HP, however, Sun is not likely to get invited to the party. No wonder Scott McNealy wants to kick IBM GS butt – EDS has become in effect Sun's lifeline.

EDS fired the first shot across the bow in the coming war in the past week by stating that for enterprise applications Linux is unsuitable because it is not scalable enough, not secure enough and is open to "forking" into different flavours. This was obviously music to the ears of Sun which has staked its future on making Solaris 10 the heavy duty operating system of choice. Despite the fact that Sun has done everything to open up Solaris 10 to the world, by making it open source and Intel X86 compatible, there are many who believe it is swimming against the Linux tide.