* IBM updates DB2, Black Duck mixes and matches, SteelEye looks to business continuity
With a weather forecast predicting penguin-suitable temperatures, LinuxWorld Conference and Expo will kick off this week at the Javitz Center in New York with plenty of cool enterprise wares on tap.
Leading the LinuxWorld announcement change is IBM, which is giving a sneak peek of an update to its DB2 database software. DB2 v8.2, code-named Stinger, will be available later this year and will include features to balance and fine-tune Linux database workloads. Stinger will support the new Linux Kernel 2.6, designed to run distributed applications this quarter.
Big Blue will also be unveiling new classes and programs aimed at helping customers migrate to Linux from the NT operating system, which Microsoft will no longer support by year-end. The idea is to help customers move from Microsoft Exchange on NT, for example, to Lotus Domino on Linux, or from Microsoft SQL Server to DB2 Universal Database on Linux.
Other vendors expected to make announcements at the show include:
* The start-up Black Duck Software will launch a software package for enterprises concerned about open source licensing compatibility and restrictions when mixing and matching open source components, such as operating system, Web servers, middleware and driver software, into full systems.
* SteelEye will announce a business continuity product designed to replicate Linux-based servers and applications across a WAN for disaster recovery. The company will have a demonstration of the product using IBM Linux-based BladeCenter hardware and DB2 software.
* Veritas will unveil, among other products, support for SuSE Linux in OpForce 3.2, the latest version of its automated server provisioning software. OpForce will support SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3.0 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
* Sun, will preview the next version of its Sun Java Desktop System and “Project Looking Glass,” its Java-based graphical user interface. Sun also plans to lift the covers off updates to its Sun Java Enterprise Systems infrastructure software package and showcase new Linux development tools.
* HP is announcing a new Linux-based thin client products designed to work with Linux terminal servers running packages from the open source Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) package. The HP Compaq T530 ($300) and T550 ($350) diskless workstations have been tested with LTSP software, which runs on most major Linux distributions and is freely available from http://www.ltsp.org
