With China at the head of the table, Asia's growing appetite for open-source computing technologies is helping IBM's efforts to migrate enterprises from Windows-on-Intel to Linux-on-Power servers.
Al Zollar, general manager at IBM's eServer iSeries Group, said he expected the mainland and the region's other developing markets to boost awareness and demand for IBM's alternative server and operating system this year.
'A variety of businesses and organisations, from small firms to medium and large enterprises, are already leveraging IBM Linux-on-Power technology as a key differentiator in their infrastructure,' he said. 'We're working with [commercial open-source software supplier] Red Hat, China's Red Flag and other Linux distributors to provide more customers with greater ease of use and reliability, a simplified infrastructure and increased security.'
IBM's family of Power and PowerPC microprocessors are among the most widely used in the industry. These chips - which run on IBM's pSeries, iSeries and BladeCentre servers - can also be found in Nintendo game consoles, Apple computers and some of the world's most powerful supercomputers and storage systems.
The iSeries servers, which scale from 32- to 64-bit computing systems, support collaboration, database management, security, systems and network management, Web and application serving, along with file and print serving.
IBM's big push for its Linux-?on-Power servers is fuelled by the anticipated lift in spending for information technology products and an opportunity to migrate a large number of Windows-on-Intel, or 'Wintel', users.