Reading the news feeds I was kind of hoping that IBM was going to make a push back into the consumer market. After transferring their consumer/business hardware solutions to Lenovo, they’ve become a company with a solid corporate reputation, but little consumer mind share.
Instead, what we’ll be seeing is a push to further Linux server solutions. Still very cool for the Linux ecosystem, and hopefully this means that some of that money and attention reaches consumer hardware down the line. It’s coming at a time where Linux has unseated Unix, but still trails Windows Server by a significant margin. IBM recently released a new line of rack mounted Linux servers, so they have a vested interest in the Linux ecosystem expanding.
The $1 Billion should be paid out over a 4-5 year period, and initially will focus on cloud solutions powered by IBM hardware.
More news to follow during LinuxCon, and I’ll update this post if there are any surprising new developments.
Now then IBM, about us consumers, could you throw us a bone? Maybe offer some contextual search services we could play with? I’d pay to have a Watson app on my phone.