IBM announced new initiatives to further support and speed up the adoption of the Linux operating system across the enterprise. These include two new Power Systems Linux Centers, as well as plans to extend support for Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology to its Power Systems portfolio of server products. The announcements were made by Arvind Krishna, GM Development and Manufacturing, IBM STG, during his June 11 keynote address at the Red Hat Summit in Boston.
IBM will open its first North American IBM Power Systems Linux Centers in Austin, Texas, and New York City in July. The centers are intended to help software developers to build and deploy new applications for big data, cloud, mobile and social business computing on open technology building blocks using Linux and IBM POWER 7+ processor technology. The new centers closely follow the opening of the world’s first IBM’s Power Systems Linux Center in May in Beijing, China. IBM also intends to make KVM available across its Linux-only Power servers. The KVM hypervisor is an integral part of the Linux kernel, offering an optimized virtualization technology for Linux workloads. IBM has long supported KVM on its x86-based products and plans to make it available on IBM’s Linux-only Power Systems product line-up next year. As a result, clients will have greater choice when they adopt Linux-based systems to drive new workloads such as big data, cloud, mobile and social computing.
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A video of Arvind Krishna’s keynote address is available here and the IBM press release can be found here.