OStatic

There are more and more companies adopting open source solutions in favor of proprietary software due to the cost savings they can reap, although perhaps not enough. Today, I noticed this release from IBM about Italian food company Gruppo Amadori rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux with desktops running IBM software, much of which is free, and some of which has open source roots.

About 1,000 of the company's 6,000 employees use computers and will move to Red Hat's platform and IBM Lotus Symphony--a free software suite with long-standing open source roots, although it's not developed as open source any longer. The company will also switch from Microsoft Exchange to an IBM Lotus Notes and Domino environment hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is the type of solution that many other companies should look into.

Today IBM announced that it has teamed with Canonical and Virtual Bridges to offer a Linux-based virtual desktop computing environment. With this product, IBM hopes to emphasize and increase adoption of its Lotus collaboration software, as well as promote the use of Linux (Canonical's Ubuntu) by way of Virtual Bridges' VERDE desktop virtualization platform.

The virtual desktop uses IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution software, and includes Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony (Symphony specifically uses the Open Document Format). While whether or not including Lotus applications will draw businesses away from purchasing licenses for costlier office/collaboration suites is as yet unknown, the Lotus name recognition coupled with the virtualized desktop might garner at least a second, serious, look from businesses wrestling with moving to more open platforms.