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IBM continues to feed Novell with Cognos rollout on Suse Linux

IBM looked past Red Hat to start with Novell's Suse Linux in its mainframe strategy.

Matt Asay Contributing Writer
Matt Asay is a veteran technology columnist who has written for CNET, ReadWrite, and other tech media. Asay has also held a variety of executive roles with leading mobile and big data software companies.
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Matt Asay

IBM has long looked to Novell to serve as a buffer to Red Hat's growing dominance.

Years ago, IBM invested $50 million in Novell. More recently, IBM selected Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise for its Cognos 8 mainframe debut. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux version is planned for the future.

The choice of Linux was easy: 20 percent of IBM's System z growth stems from Linux, and Linux is easier to develop. According to an article in SearchEnterpriseLinux.com:

Cognos was able to fast-track porting the application to System z because it was already available for IBM Systems p and x and because it's faster to make changes to open source code...

This won't offer Novell much of a lead over Red Hat, but it's a signal that Red Hat has real competition again.