– By Grant Gross –
IBM and three Japanese PC makers are banding together to pump up Linux’s functionality for the “enterprise” business market.

IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC already have thousands of developers working with members of the Linux community on Linux-for-the-enterprise projects, but today’s agreement will help the four companies avoid duplication and speed up results, says Dan Powers, director of Internet technologies for IBM. The four companies have worked together on the Open Source Development Lab.

The companies aren’t planning something as formal as a project hosting site; instead focusing more on steps such as introducing developers working on similar projects. IBM alone has about 2,000 developers working on Linux projects, Powers estimates, and the four companies will welcome others who want to join them.

“We felt it probably made sense that we should deepen or expand the relationships that we already had, with the thought that four heads are better than one,” Powers says. “It’s all about speed and collaboration, trying to get these enhancements out into Linux quicker.”

In a press release titled, “Leading Linux companies announce alliance to help Linux mature,” the companies gave examples of projects they will work together on. One is a “serviceability project designed to enhance problem isolation, the ability to quickly and precisely isolate problems in running systems,” according to the press release. Another project Other projects planned include scalability and non-uniform memory access capabilities for Linux.

Powers says the three PC makers are also interested in IBM’s Project eLiza, a effort to make “self-healing” servers that can manage their own problems and fix them. Much of eLiza’s focus will be on IBM’s Linux server platform, Powers adds.

Powers says the partnership also demonstrates the interest in Linux from the Asia-Pacific market, where IBM signed a Linux kiosk deal with convenience store chain Lawson Inc. last fall. “Everybody’s very interested over there about the price performance they’re getting out of Linux and access to a huge skills base of services companies,” he says.

The call for enterprise enhancements to Linux have come both from people in the Linux community and from IBM customers, Powers says. “When you talk to CIOs, before they’ll adopt anything in their enterprise, they’re extremely concerned about the scalability, the performance, the availability,” he adds. “With Linux being an Open Source project, they potentially take a step back and say, ‘Is it ready for prime time?’ We think it is, but it can only get better.”

It’s LinuxWorld Expo time in New York, and the announcements just keep rolling in. ZDNet UK reports that Compaq will use the show to announce new clustering technology for its high-end machines. The company has selected the clustering software from SteelEye Technology for its Intel-based ProLiant Linux server line.

An anonymous reader writes: “Here are a few insights on Bertelsmann’s announcement that Napster will become a pay service by June/July.”

It’s at mp3newswire.net.

ZDNet posts a rah-rah piece by Hillary Rosen. Rosen says: “The irony is that Napster and others may soonn find themselves defeniding their licensed content from the same nefarious activity that helped create their business.”

AsiaBizTech has a short item on Laser5 Co., Ltd., selling its “PacketBlackHole” appliance server to
monitor illegal accesses to networks starting Feb. 5. It’s the second item on the page, right after something about Chinese people becoming more favorable about something called Microsoft. More on the Laser5 announcement: “This product is capable of storing all the IP packets going back and forth on the
network and logging traces of illegal accesses. It can also be used to deter a
company’s internal users’ information leakage or Internet use for private
purposes. It will be installed in between the router, which is a connecting point of
the Internet and the firm’s internal network, and the firewall. When there is a need
to record IP packets on the internal network, the device is put inside the firewall.
One PacketBlackHole per server configuration is also possible.”

Slashdot readers talk about an announcement on TechWeb that
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein plans to Open Source its internal
systems integration toolkit, with help from Collab.net.

Slashdot readers talk about an announcement on TechWeb that
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein plans to Open Source its internal
systems integration toolkit, with help from Collabnet.

AnandTech reviews Pogo Linux’s history, plus its new products, including a sub-$1,000 1GHz Internet appliance. “The company’s unofficial logo became: ‘We don’t put in junk parts,’ a quote taken from one of the
founding fathers of the company. At the time, the Cyrix M2 processors and S3 Virge graphics
accelerators they were putting into these $299 systems seemed contradictory to ‘no junk parts’
statement but it definitely put them on the map. For someone looking to setup a cheap web server or a
box to sit in the corner and be a firewall/NAT machine or maybe even an MP3 server, the $299 Pogo
was affordable.”

“The Linux support services
market is on the launch pad, gearing up for blastoff. According to IDC, this
market will skyrocket from $28 million in 2000 to $285 million in 2004 – a
tenfold increase.” It’s a press release from PR Newswire but it’s in story form.

A certain Web site we can’t name on a family site, f***edcompany.com has a rumor about Nominum.com: “Rumor has it that Nominum.com — a company that sells free, opensource applications for $60,000+ — will be announcing layoffs (20-35%) this Friday.” Remember, don’t believe every rumor you read.