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IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offeringIBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offeringPosted Dec 4, 2008 19:25 UTC (Thu) by MattPerry (guest, #46341)In reply to: IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering by jspaleta Parent article: IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering
> Isn't the Virtual Bridges technologies entirely proprietary?
It appears so from reading the marketing materials.
> I find it ironic that a Canonical exec is quoted in the announcement
True, but changing out the entire OS for a business can't be done overnight. Switching from a proprietary operating system such as Windows to something open like Ubuntu is a step in the right direction. It looks like the VERDE software is used as a stepping stone to allow users to continue to use Windows-only applications for which there is no native Linux port.
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IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:52 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Read the announcement again. The announced bundle is the opposite of what Virtual Bridges has been doing up till now. Up till now, they've been letting you virtualize windows desktops running on linux/solaris iron so you could get access to windows applications from linux/mac/windows clients. Really no different than the citrix ica model, except I think citrix lets you download the proprietary clients gratis.
But this new announcement is the opposite. IBM is leveraging Ubuntu to offer their proprietary Lotus software gratis as part of the bundle in an effort to get people to use Lotus instead of MS Office. Lotus is available for Windows already. Business could choose to pay for Lotus software for Windows clients. So why the bundle? IBM is offering a predatory price cut on the Lotus bundled in this offer compared to its Windows variant. The expectation is businesses buy the bundles, setup a central linux server which hosts the virtualized Ubuntu desktop instances with gratis Lotus available. Client computers... macs/linux/windows.. run the proprietary Virtual Bridges client software and access those virtual desktops to make use of of the gratis install of the proprietary Lotus software.
The cost benefit here is that IBM is willing to give Lotus away in these bundles, whereas they are not willing to do that for the Windows version of Lotus.
Canonical is apparently getting a $10 support contract cut per user. Which is great news for Canonical as its a dedicated revenue vector out of the desktop bundle. Do we know if Canonical gets a guaranteed support contract cut from its Dell installs? This might actually be a more solid support revenue stream for Canonical than the Dell arrangement.
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