IBM to Push Linux as Upgrade for Two Million Windows NT Servers

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Microsoft stopped selling Windows NT 4.0 Server in July 2002, but some two million servers are still out there plugging along in the X86 installed base running that very popular implementation of the Windows platform. After December 31, 2004, non-security patches will are no longer available for Windows NT server, and a year later, per-incident, premier support services, and online support (including security-related fixes) will no longer be available for the server version of Windows NT 4. This, thinks IBM, is a big opportunity to drive Linux sales.

To that end, Big Blue has announced that it will be gearing up its vast 90,000-strong partner channel to sell products and services to help Windows NT Server customers to move to Linux on its own xSeries iron. Right now, IBM is focusing its efforts on teaching its partners how to do Windows-to-Linux, SQL Server-to-DB2, and Exchange-to-Domino migrations. IBM is preparing a set of marketing programs called MigrateNow for partners, but has not detailed the specific incentives it will give to either partners or their customers as they consider the jump to Linux from Windows.

It is hard to say how many of those Windows NT servers are really in play. For small and medium businesses that have more or less grown up with Windows as their major computing platform, Linux is about as attractive to them as Unix was--meaning not much. If Microsoft alienates these customers with high software and services costs, they will train themselves and make the jump, but if the pricing isn't too exorbitant, they will move to Windows 2000 or Windows 2003. Very large organizations with big racks of Windows NT machines in their data centers or single units spread out across their departments are ripe for the picking, however. These companies have Unix skills and can hire cheap Linux skills, and making such a jump is not that big of a deal--particularly for print, file, Web, and e-mail serving.

Whatever IBM does, you can expect that the running of Linux inside logical partitions on its zSeries mainframes and pSeries and iSeries midrange boxes will be a big part of the deal. IBM will, of course, push Linux on its BladeCenter blade servers and its xSeries tower and rack servers, too.