IBM To Resell Red Hat's Linux SoftwareIBM To Resell Red Hat's Linux Software

IBM put its relationship with Red Hat Linux Inc. in the spotlight Monday, announcing an extended partnership alliance under which IBM will throw the weight of IBM Global Services behind sales and support of the Red Hat Advanced Server Linux operating system on IBM's eServer product line.

Under terms of the deal, IBM Global Services will support Red Hat Advanced Server on zSeries mainframe, iSeries midrange, and pSeries Unix servers, in addition to the support it already provides for Advanced Server running on xSeries Intel-based servers. IBM also will make WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, and Lotus software products available to run on Advanced Server, starting with the xSeries this year and expanding to additional server types in 2003. IBM already offers hardware, software, and services support on all four server lines for Red Hat competitor SuSE Linux's Enterprise Server operating system.

The expanded alliance between IBM and Red Hat doesn't fundamentally change the dynamics of Linux adoption, but it does help IBM and Red Hat customers potentially consolidate service contracts through IBM Global Services, says Al Gillen, an IDC research director.

The expanded relationship between IBM and Red Hat also suggests that Red Hat is becoming a more-important partner to IBM, even though neither company has an exclusive partnership with the other. While some analysts debate the impact that IBM's increasingly chummy relationship with Red Hat will have on SuSE Linux, Gillen says it puts pressure on SuSE, which had already offered Enterprise Server on IBM's iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, and zSeries servers.

Another byproduct of IBM's increased support for Red Hat could be to let customers judge Linux packages based upon features rather than support, says Holger Dyroff, general manager of SuSE Inc. Dyroff says this won't be a problem because SuSE plans to announce the newest version of its Linux operating system in November.