The Bowen report, submitted to top management on Dec. 20, presented a plan for using Linux to undermine the software advantage enjoyed by IBM´s two key rivals, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. Microsoft´s Windows NT and Sun´s Solaris are the leading operating systems used today on server computers, the data-serving machines that are the engines of corporate networks and the Internet.
To combat Sun and Microsoft, the report recommended, IBM should retool all its server operating systems, from the mainframe OS/390 to AIX, IBM´s version of Unix, to run Linux smoothly. The same should be true of all IBM´s database, Web applications and messaging software, the report said. And IBM, the Bowen team concluded, should push Linux as the operating system of choice for the Internet -- more robust and reliable than Windows NT and eventually overtaking Solaris, Sun´s flavor of Unix, as the industry standard for Unix.
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To combat Sun and Microsoft, the report recommended, IBM should retool all its server operating systems, from the mainframe OS/390 to AIX, IBM´s version of Unix, to run Linux smoothly. The same should be true of all IBM´s database, Web applications and messaging software, the report said. And IBM, the Bowen team concluded, should push Linux as the operating system of choice for the Internet -- more robust and reliable than Windows NT and eventually overtaking Solaris, Sun´s flavor of Unix, as the industry standard for Unix.
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