"Earlier this week The Register had an interesting talk over lunch with Red Hat VP marketing Mark de Visser, covering a fair range of topics, including how Redmond finally gets it, what takes its place (no, not Red Hat, we agreed on that) and the two Next Big Things for Red Hat--the Red Hat Desktop, and the Advanced Server deal with IBM. There's a certain amount of controversy associated with both of these, but as (with the aid of the Red Hat 8 CD he pressed into our hands) we'll do a user's eye view of the desktop later, we'll concentrate on the Advanced Server strategy here.

"Red Hat has been involved with IBM for some considerable time, IBM has been talking the Linux talk for some considerable time, but it is the perception of The Register (which in its turn, has been hanging around IBM for a not inconsiderable time) that much smoke and little light has emanated from the Blue Behemoth. IBM can be a great place to hunt around for Linux information and support, and it clearly has numerous happy techies messing around with the stuff, but how easily can you actually buy Linux machines from IBM? Sure, you can get them if you specifically ask for them, but the sales operation tends not to evangelise them..."

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