Australian businesses won't see IBM Linux PC

After announcing its move into the Eastern European enterprise market with a new Linux and Lotus based PC, an analyst has said it is unlikely IBM and its partners will offer anything similar to Australian businesses.

The computing giant has entered into a deal with Red Hat, Austrian software distributor VDEL and Polish services firm LX Polska to provide open source PCs to the Eastern European market in response to strong demand from Russian government departments, according to Reuters.

"For IBM this is definitely a software play to push Lotus, it's them and Red Hat trying to compete against Office and Windows in Eastern Europe's maturing market," said Michael Warrilow, director of research firm Hydrasight. "Lotus Symphony is largely based on IBM's open office protocol, and by teaming up with Red Hat as an OS provider they're targeting an enterprise and government market that's yet to have a full build-out."

The analyst said it was unlikely Australia would see a similar push from IBM and its partners. "It's too late for the corporate market here, for better or worse, 90 percent of computers are standardised on Windows and Office," he said.

Although Warrilow believes that it would be too late for a similar initiative in the Australian or US enterprise markets, yesterday's announcements come after Dell released its own Linux PC line for consumers in the US and the UK last year

IBM told Reuters that the hardware itself would be manufactured by its partners VDEL and LX Polska, with an IBM spokesperson saying the Linux PC line would cut desktop computing costs in half.