Customers are very happy when the vendors they deal with adopt Eclipse because it reduces training costs. |
He's really one of the smartest technologists I know, both in terms of the understanding of technology and where things are going to be moving. He's also a very charismatic leader, and he'll have the ability to bring in new energy and new outside involvement. |
I can tell you that every customer I have talked with in the market is implementing Linux as a key part of their strategy, ... People find that it is scalable, reliable, and the market is growing to support it. |
IBM has been aggressive in terms of financial incentives for companies that are part of their overall ecosystem. They are making the effort to ensure this will be something that attracts partners so they won't go looking elsewhere. |
It's not just about getting at everything, but also coordinating it. |
One of the key issues with any environment is that the customer needs to have the feeling that if they adopt [the technology], there's a big player behind it that they can go to for support. Or if there's a problem, a bump in the night, developers want to be able to hold someone responsible. |
The Innovation Centers have been working really well for IBM, ... When a vendor approaches them and says they want to partner, IBM asks them, 'Have you ported to Linux?' and, if they haven't, IBM recommends the centers to help them with tools [to migrate to Linux.] |
Think of it like electricity. When you plug in a cord you are making an assumption about infrastructure. |
What it means is Eclipse now gets to expand its footprint beyond the traditional computing environment, and it gets to reach out to the mobile device. |
Whereas IBM decided many years ago that they would not be in the application business, ... They're taking their middleware so that it evolves and becomes wrappers for packaged software that is becoming componentized. Then it almost doesn't matter who the primary packaged application is because if you put the enterprise wrapper around it, then you sort of control the game. |
Who controls the future of computing is really what this is all about. All these vendors understand that this is a transitional time for the industry where platforms are evolving, and everybody wants to be the market leader and control things. |