Selling servers is IBM’s biggest Linux business, with nearly $2 billion in sales expected in 2004, but the company says services and software revenue will grow in coming years. …
…Middleware, foundational software that lies above the operating system, includes databases to house information and application servers to run Java programs on a server. Services includes providing support, helping companies migrate from one system to another, running customers’ entire computing infrastructure and translating software so it runs on Linux.
In two-to-five years, Linux services and software revenue each will be larger than Linux server revenue, Stallings estimated. The statistics highlight the payoff to the billions of dollars IBM is spending on Linux and why it’s so eager to defuse intellectual property threats to the open-source operating system. …Whole article can be found here.
It is always good to realise where the money is coming from for IBM now and in the future. As you can clearly conclude, IBM is in the Server and Services business most of all. From a services perspective they couldn’t care less how complex certain “migrations” are, because they can make it work for you at a cost. So let this discussion of intellectual property and patenting get out of the way and let IBM make lot’s of money.
