Linux Brings In $1 Billion in Revenue for IBM

IBM also on Wednesday will make a slew of product and new customer announcements at the show. Among the new customer wins to be announced will be Unilever, a multibrand company whose products include Ragu, Lipton and Elizabeth Arden.

Unilever will standardize its infrastructure on Linux and has signed a multiyear contract with Big Blue to help it migrate to Linux. The deal includes hardware, software and services, an IBM spokeswoman told eWEEK.

German-based Grohe, which designs, manufactures and distributes water faucets, is another customer win for IBM. It will implement a solution based on MySAP CRM Mobile Sales running DB2 database software for Linux on IBMs eServer xSeries.

And the PGA Tour will offer TourCast, a first-of-its-kind online application that enables golf fans to follow tournament action in real time. Fans can get up-to-date information on golf matches, watch the play live, zoom in and replay shots and the like.

The TourCast application runs on Linux Virtual Services—an on-demand service that IBM hosts on virtual servers on its eServer zSeries mainframes and Enterprise Storage Servers—enabling the PGA Tour to pay only for the power and capacity required to meet actual consumer demand.

VeriSign Inc., which provides digital trust services, is also moving all of its public key infrastructure services from Solaris to Linux, using IBMs xSeries servers, Handy said. VeriSign has already deployed about two dozen IBM x330 servers on the West Coast to support the migration, and plans to significantly boost that number early this year.

"Our Linux business continues to grow. We have netted some 1,700 new Linux customers since last August. We now have 6,300 Linux customers, compared to the 4,600 we had last August, across a range of industries and usages," Handy said.