IBM introduced a series of new products, services and initiatives that further expand IBM's commitment to Linux and open source by enabling the next generation of Linux.

As the company marks ten years of support for Linux, IBM announced a number of cross-company initiatives to drive the next generation of Linux. Attributes of next-generation Linux include its role in green IT; use of Linux in business-critical workloads; use of Linux by mid-market customers; use of Linux on the desktop client of the future; and using the innovation-through-collaboration approach of the Linux community to bring technology advances to customers.

The announcements include the first contribution of open-source software for supercomputers based on Linux; a new ISV software appliance toolkit that will expand the reach of Linux into the mid-market; pre-loading of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 in Lotus Foundations, a hardware and software bundle geared for businesses from five employees on up; an expansion of its real-time Linux initiative; the introduction of a new version of z/VM with a dynamic memory upgrade feature available for Linux users; a planned initiative with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat around Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony; and more, the company said.

"IBM has been a major supporter of Linux and open source for ten years, helping to drive the adoption of Linux by millions of users, across tens of thousands of devices and applications," said Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM. "Linux is clearly main stream. We look forward to the next ten years, where Linux will continue to increasingly drive business-critical workloads for all sizes of organizations, while empowering the new enterprise data center through virtualization, real-time Linux, cloud computing and other advances, including liberating the desktop."