http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18327.html
Taking aim at Microsoft <http://www.microsoft.com> and Unix server vendors, IBM <http://www.ibm.com> has announced plans for a new center in New York City that will provide Linux solutions, training and education for financial services companies that want to begin using the open source Latest News about open source <http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/search.pl?query=%22open%20source%22&siteorcat=all> operating system.
IBM said its Linux center, with an initial investment of more than US$1 million by the company, will include support for hardware and software services from IBM as well as from its partners and other participants -- including SunGard, J.D. Edwards, Veritas and Sybase. The goal will be to help financial services firms evaluate and plan Linux implementations.
"We're able to bring together not only what we're doing but what our partners are doing as well," IBM Linux strategic manager Adam Jollans told NewsFactor. "As customers move from pilot projects to real deployment, this will be a way to test that."
Jollans added that the center also will provide a gateway to the Linux and open source community, which may hold user meetings at the Manhattan location.
While IBM would not disclose which customers are on board with its new center, Giga Information Group <http://www.gigaweb.com> analyst Stacey Quandt told NewsFactor that a number of financial services companies are embracing the open source standard.
"Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, Lehman Brothers, E*Trade and Credit Suisse First Boston -- all of those companies have been actively porting applications to Linux," Quandt said.
IBM did say that more than 40 of its customers in the financial services industry are deploying Linux and the company expects that number will grow, along with the availability of Linux services and support at the center.
