Curiouser and curiouser said Alice
Or would have done, if she had been around and interested in the technology sector and been watching recent events...
So hot on the heels of a Dilbert cartoon referencing open source as the new "the way" to run your business IT (for what else could this cartoon be implying?) came LinuxWorld.
LinuxWorld, the biggest open source showcase, is now being described by the media as the biggest software show (presumably of the year, unless their Divination studies have been going particularly well). Wow. Pretty mainstream. Actually the size is easily explained. At the other software trade shows there are two tendencies; they are either targeted at a single vertical, interesting to some, boring to everyone outside of the given market, or the show is essentially about a single vendor's products, basically boring to almost everybody 
.
LinuxWorld 2007 had pretty much every major technology company on the planet on show. The keynote speakers list reads like a who's who of technology business: HP, eBay, Amazon, Dell, VMware, Novell, most represented by people at or very near the top of their company. The sponsors list adds Oracle, Intel and Motorola; everybody wants a piece of this open source market.
Even Microsoft...
There they are, buried deep in the speakers programme: Sam Ramji, Director, Platform Technology Strategy, Microsoft Corporation. Definitely something is up.
And then there was the Dell announcement about widening their sales of Ubuntu Linux (that's right not Windows) PCs. You know, if I held Microsoft shares I'd get rid of them quick...
Posted at 06:26PM Aug 13, 2007 by Chris Puttick in General |