Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/03/10/big_blue_schizzy_over_aix/

Big Blue schizzy over AIX and Linux

All the boats are rising -- what can this mean?

By Mike Magee

Posted in On-Prem, 10th March 1999 11:29 GMT

A senior executive at IBM said this morning that Linux may challenge AIX at the high end. Jon Prial, who runs IBM's software EMEA group, said: "No one can predict where Linux is going to go. Linux is looking to move to the high end. "AIX continues to be a secure powerful system and we're very supportive of it. At this point we're happily supporting many operating systems." Prial said: "All the boats are rising and we haven't seen any of the operating systems declining [in market share]." But Prial was reluctant to say what IBM would do if Linux ever competed with AIX. He did say: "We're focused on Netfinity on Linux. Right now our focus is on the server side. The systems are more ready on the server side. We're not here to bully anyone around. We're going to confirm our development on NT." ®