Are there pivotal pieces or themes to IBMs Linux strategy?
Kuznetsova: We have identified five strategic areas for our investments that are based on market trends and customer requirements. First is the Big Green Linux project-a cross-company initiative to reduce energy consumption in IBM and customers’ data centers by server consolidation, improved resources management and workload balancing. As a part of this project, we consolidated 3,900 servers supporting an IBM 8,200-server infrastructure on just 30 mainframes running Linux and project a huge reduction in office space and energy consumption as a result. Many of our customers consolidate workloads as well. For example, Bank of New Zealand recently consolidated 200 Sun servers running internet banking and teller functions on mainframes with Red Hat Linux, projecting a 20% ROI over the life of the project. The second strategic area is Linux for business critical workloads-we see a huge increase in customers using Linux to run complex vertical applications, such as financial trading, or cros
