IBM and Ubuntu Going Head To Head Against Windows 7?

Published on October 20, 2009 in General by Rami Taibah

This last September, IBM and Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu- teamed up to bring Linux-powered netbooks to African markets. Commentators wondered, and rightly so, why Africa?

Well wonder no more! The deal isn’t exclusively African no more. IBM and Canonical are bringing Linux-powered netbooks stateside. The idea is to have IBM’s Client For Smart Work on top of a Linux OS.

With Microsoft’s Windows 7 just around the corner, the timing for such announcement couldn’t have been more perfect. Canonical and IBM claim that migrating to Windows 7 would cost up to $2000 per computer, with hardware upgrades contributing to most of the cost.

“If a company is a ‘Windows shop,’ at some point it will need to evaluate the significant costs of migrating its base to Microsoft’s next desktop and bolstering its defenses against virus and other attacks,” said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus in a statement. “American businesses have asked for a compelling alternative and today we are delivering IBM Client for Smart Work in the U.S.”

I really wish that the IBM/Canonical team pull would pull an Apple, who announced iMacs, Macbooks, and Mac Minis literally from thin air, or at least see the deal come to fruition within a couple of weeks.

Update: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Computerworld notes that these are targeted for businesses and aren’t really a desktop replacement for Windows. He also breaks down the cloud computing pricing:

Option A: A Starting Point

$3 LotusLive iNotes per user/month.

E-Mail, calendaring

TOTAL:$ 36 per user per year.

Option B: Add Social software capabilities to Option A

$9.75 LotusLive Connections per user/month

Dashboard, file sharing, personal profile networking, contact management, groups, project management, instant messaging.

TOTAL: $ 153 per user/year.

Option C: A Typical Solution

$74.50 Lotus Notes/iNotes

E-Mail, calendar, todo, contacts), Lotus Sametime entry (Instant messaging, chat, presence awareness), Lotus Quickr entry (file sharing)

TOTAL:$74.50 per user first year; $25.75 per user each additional year for the IBM Lotus software

Option D: Add virtual desktop capabilities

$49 per user first year. $10/user/year for subsequent years.

Supports Windows and Linux guests.

via [Internetnews.com]