IT heavyweights trek to LinuxWorld

IBM, SAP, Netscape and Hewlett-Packard (HP) were among the companies to deliver key announcements at this week's LinuxWorld conference in San Jose, California.

IBM said it will bundle Red Hat Software's Linux with its servers and workstations, and also announced plans to port the operating system to its PowerPC chip. IBM and Red Hat will provide joint technical support.

ERP (enterprise resource planning) giant, SAP said it will respond to "a groundswell of customer demand" for the open source operating system (OS), by providing its R/3 software on Linux. The first customer shipment of R/3 on Linux is slated for the autumn.

Netscape announced support for Linux in its Netscape Directory Server, Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Delegated Administrator software. The firm said it is also working with systems vendors such as Compaq, HP and VA Research Linux Systems, as well as Linux software vendors such as Caldera and Red Hat, to guarantee comprehensive Linux support for Linux server software, operating systems and hardware platforms.

HP said it will add Linux application development APIs to its HP-UX operating system. In addition, the firm demonstrated a prototype OpenMail messaging server running on Linux. It said the final product is expected to vary somewhat from the current Unix-based version of OpenMail.

And software firm, Corel said it will release its own version of the OS, called Corel Desktop Linux, to support its Linux-based office applications.