What is happening with IBM and Linux in India?
September 2003
For years, India has been pursuing information technology as a means of national transformation, and is now poised to become an IT powerhouse. But the Indian government has expressed concerns about the effects of proprietary solutions on the national economy. And India is a very price sensitive market. So in India, Linux really matters. To get an update on what's been happening in India with Linux, and the role IBM has been playing, we talked to Abe Thomas, IBM Country Manager for India. Here's what he had to say.
First of all, thank you for talking to us. There has been a lot of interest in the press recently about the emerging importance of Linux in India. Can you bring us up-to-date about how India has become so interested in Linux?
Thank you for having me on this discussion. Linux has clearly generated a lot of interest, especially in India.
The Indian marketplace has a UNIX heritage. Initially, there were really no dominant players in the marketplace, and for several decades IBM wasn't here either, so there wasn't a chance for IBM mainframes to dominate, or any of the other operating systems or platforms for that matter.
IBM returned to India in 1992 as soon as the new Government policies made it possible for us to do so, and IBM India Limited was established in 1999. But during that time, in absence of a dominant player, companies and organizations in India had begun to adopt UNIX. And since Linux is similar to UNIX, and Linux is free, Linux started becoming more popular and more mainstream in the late 90s and early 2000’s.
Government organizations started proposing and using Linux in selected projects. But the fact that Indian educational institutions started offering Linux in the classroom really drove the acceptance and popularity of Linux in the Indian marketplace. It was a great opportunity for IBM, so we took advantage of this momentum in the marketplace, and adopted Linux across the board.
The President of India, in fact, Dr. Abdul Kalam seems to have strong personal views about Linux and open source. What role do you think that will play in Linux adoption in India?
It is remarkable that the President of India openly said, in a speech at an institution in Pune (in the western part of India), that it’s high time Indian IT professionals looked at open source software as opposed to other proprietary systems -- and he made a specific reference to Linux.
Linux can offer a lower cost of ownership -- which is very important in the price-sensitive Indian marketplace. Indian businesses do not have a propensity to spend a lot on IT, and per capita income in India is currently lower than in most other parts of the world.
So this is a great leg up for our efforts to get more and more companies and government institutions to look at Linux. The fact that the President of India himself made this statement will be a great boon for our efforts to get the Indian marketplace to adopt Linux and open source in a more wholehearted manner.
IBM, in fact, recently announced a Linux desktop in India, how well has been received?
As you know, India is geographically very large, and there seven large metropolitan cities in which much of our commerce and industry are concentrated. But there are marketplaces outside these metropolitan cities who can't afford the higher cost solutions. We announced this Linux-based desktop, primarily in conjunction with Red Hat, to go after the Small-to Medium sized Business (SMB) and the Small Office Home Office (SOHO) segments of the marketplace in these non-metro areas. By introducing a desktop with the Linux operating system, these organizations are able to have the benefits of Linux-based solutions. In fact, many needs can be met by just downloading solutions from the Net.
The Linux desktop is providing businesses in these areas with access to solutions that weren't accessible to them before, and the partners who are our primary route to market in these areas are really seeing a lot of traction with the IBM offering.
IBM has just opened a new technology design center in one of these large urban centers, Bangalore. Could you tell us more about the center, and what Linux work will be going on there?
The Technology Design Centre in Bangalore is part of the world wide technology group initiative. In the U.S. we have centers in Burlington, in Endicot, in Rochester, Austin, and Raleigh. In Germany, there's a technology design center in Mainz; and in Japan, there's one in Yamato. We were happy to add Bangalore as one of the locations.
The center in India will enable us to put into practice some of the work that we've already been doing around Linux, things like embedded systems and ASIC logic; other application software as well. It provides us with even greater depth to provide Linux solutions as we push into the marketplace.
What other Linux investments has IBM made in India?
There are several investments that we have made specifically for Linux. These investments don't just support our domestic marketplace, but are also helping IBM’s Linux efforts around the world.
We have a Linux Porting Center, primarily focused on helping developers and ISVs across the region to develop, port and certify their solutions on Linux. We have a Linux Solution Center, to help customers benchmark pilots or test Linux-based solutions on IBM infrastructure, both hardware and middleware. We have a Linux Center of Competency, which is part of the IBM software lab. And development centers in Pune, and in Bangalore, where we’ve undertaken projects like putting the Linux kernel on a watch to show the flexibility of Linux, and the potential Linux has for embedded systems.
Another center, which is part of our e-business Software Center, develops and delivers state-of-the-art e-business solutions to commercial customers and governments. It's located in the northern part of India, in a place called Gurgaon, which is close to the central government. We're working with the Indian government to develop a framework for deploying Linux in central and state governments, in much the same way that IBM Germany collaborated with that country's government.
These are some of the specific investments we have made. But we're not just investing in Linux, we're investing in bringing IBM-based solutions to Linux. We'll be offering these solutions in India, and to the larger Asia/Pacific region as well.
IBM also recently announced a relationship with Benz Infotech. What’s that partnership all about?
Benz Infotech is an Indian ISV. We have partnered with them to offer end-to-end Linux solutions to our customers in India, including our hardware, middleware; and solutions for high availability, high performance clustering; network security solutions; and voice-over IP.
This partnership will help us promote Linux-based solutions with a like-minded solution partner, a partner who sees Linux as a great opportunity. It's the first of many such relationships we hope to be signing with the local ISV community to provide Linux-based solutions to the marketplace.
What sort of Linux interest have you seen with customers in India?
We’ve seen several customers adopt Linux solutions, and we have some very good references in place.
For example, there's ER&DC, who is using Linux on zSeries for training to support a major e-Governance initiative. They've consolidated servers in the organization, and now can add application services to Government departments as an Application Service Provider, on demand. Traditionally, ASPs host applications and databases on individual servers in a farm, but ER&DC has put the farm on zSeries, which reduced costs substantially. DB2 Universal Database for Linux and WebSphere Application Server are available to individual users in their own virtual Linux images on the zSeries.
IBM also implemented server consolidation for the United Breweries Group. They had been using a server farm for some in-house Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and business applications, but over the years, the number of servers gave rise to significant increase in administrative costs and complexity. They wanted data integrity, but they wanted to focus on their business instead of their IT infrastructure. We recommended server consolidation with Linux and xSeries and iSeries eServers, and then we helped them migrate to SAP for ERP. The infrastructure was deployed in Bangalore and New Delhi, and supports the sales offices, distilleries and distribution hubs in 29 states in the country. An infrastructure for disaster recovery will be put in place, and they implemented a Linux-based e-mail system on pSeries as well.
Then there's Sahara TV, one of Asia’s largest digital TV news-stations, who recently installed a secure infrastructure solution based on Trustix. They used Linux on xSeries to deploy a firewall, a proxy server, as well as e-mail and DNS servers. This has helped the company increase security and decrease its total cost of ownership, while connecting Sahara-TV headquarters to 100 mobile and remote users.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Yes, IBM has been committed to Linux for years—long before it became established, and IBM supports vendor-neutrality and the “opening up” of software and services. Linux was developed for an open world too. By running on everyone’s technology, Linux neutralizes any vendor’s ability to exercise control over developers or customers.
So we have a great opportunity in India to embrace this technology in a very fundamental way. After being out of the Indian marketplace for a long time, IBM has come back to offer value-added, and cost effective solutions to our customers, and to the Indian government. It's a marketplace that really understands the value of open platforms, open standards and Linux. It's the sort of open marketplace we expect will value the importance of being an on demand business as well.
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Abe Thomas
