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About Open Voices
The Linux Foundation Podcast featuring conversations with Executive Director Jim Zemlin and Open Source Luminaries.
Interview with Bob Sutor Part 1
Bob Sutor Interview
April 2009
Jim Zemlin: Hello, this is Jim Zemlin. I’m the Executive Director
of the Linux Foundation. This is part of our ongoing podcast series
with leaders from the open source and Linux industry. Today I’m
fortunate enough to have Bob Sutor with us, who is with IBM. Bob was
recently promoted to the title of VP of Open Source and Linux at IBM.
And I will go ahead and get started by asking you about that title,
Bob. You just took over in this role. What does it mean to be the
VP of Open Source and Linux at IBM?
Bob Sutor: Thanks, Jim. Glad to be with you today. You know, it’s
kind of interesting, because, yeah, it’s a new job, but I only
changed one word from my last title, my last job. So let me give you
a little context on what I was doing, and that will lead into what
I’m doing now, and, kind of, the larger picture. For the last four
years, I was the Corporate Vice President for Open Source and
Standards. Standards is the word that’s different there.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So I lived in corporate. I had no profit and loss
responsibility whatsoever. But what I was responsible were for
really two sides of what IBM was doing around open source and
standards. The first side was worrying about how we managed our
internal processes around intellectual property licenses, standards
memberships, how we joined open source communities, how we
contributed code, how we would take in code, and all the interesting
changes that went about. We did a fair amount externally, in terms
of trying to help shape some of these licenses. So for example, IBM
was involved in the GPLv3 discussions; we were involved with many
standards groups about changing their licenses, their membership
rules; my group was behind the standards principles that we published
last year; and really, all of the different patent non-assertion
statements we made over the last four years came out of that group.
So if you, kind of, think almost as a church and state type of thing,
when you’re thinking about these communities and open source and
standards and good stuff, I think that was really, kind of, clearly,
the church side…
Jim Zemlin: {Laughter}.
Bob Sutor: …that is, if it’s – you know, what do we believe in?
Right?
Jim Zemlin: Right, right.
Bob Sutor: And how do we translate those beliefs into how we operate
internally – but how we help work with our colleagues around the
world? Governments and so forth—things like that.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: Then, beginning of February, I was asked to take over this
job from Jeff Smith, who has worked in the open source and Linux area
for quite some time. It wasn’t a complete change in that I still
brought my group over from corporate—so we still do the church
side, if you will—but now the state side here, with the open source
(sounds like: as) Linux, is that my group is responsible for helping
drive the sale of IBM software: So the (sounds like: WebSphere) of
the world, the (DB2s), the Lotus products, and so forth—on Linux.
So if it’s IBM software, and if it runs on Linux, I care about it,
and from a software company perspective, we want to sell more of it.
Now, it’s not really a breakdown, kind of a traditional proprietary
versus open source type of thing, because, as you know, a lot of IBM
software includes open source—free open source.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: It could be from Rational; it could be (sounds like:
WebSeer); it could be from any of the other divisions. So it’s a
real mixed bag of, you know, whether you’re thinking about open
source versus proprietary, but, fundamentally, it’s things such as
sales enablement, technical presales, marketing, evangelism. So I
very much am in the business of promoting Linux, promoting more
people to use Linux, with the hope that they’ll – they would like
some IBM hardware, IBM software, IBM services with their big Linux
helping as well.
Jim Zemlin: Sure, and certainly a lot of availability of IBM software
on Linux is good for the platform, regardless of what you happen to
be running in your data center. But if it’s IBM hardware as well,
it’s not bad to boot for you guys.
Bob Sutor: No, and we have, in fact, over 500 software products
running on Linux today, so. Which I was—when I first learned that
number coming to this job—frankly, I was personally, kind of,
impressed by it.
Jim Zemlin: Absolutely. Well, you guys have come a long way in the
Linux market in terms of the products, services and participation,
and, you know, I think, without question, people look to IBM as one
of the great enablers of Enterprise Linux, and the fact that it is
now in this business critical role in so many corporations around the
world. When you look back over the years since you’ve been
involved in this movement—you know, the church side of things in
particular of open source and Linux. What has IBM learned? How have
things changed over the years for your organization?
Bob Sutor: I think at the very beginning—so here we’re going back
really even more than ten years, with people like Dan Frye from IBM,
who’s very involved with what the Linux Foundation used to be,
right, before its recent name change and other sort of activities—I
think very much at the beginning, there were lots of questions about
what would happen with the future of Linux. Clearly, technically, we
thought it was pretty good. We wondered a lot about whether the
community would survive. Back then, you know – was this just a new
hot thing, and would it be replaced by something else? We were
concerned about issues of skills. So was it going to really be
confined to just a few people, right? Or eventually, would there be
a lot of people who would know Linux, people who could become future
IBM employees, for example, or work in the various partner companies
that we have, or support it in universities, in any which way?
And I think what we quickly found out back then was that the
community was extremely healthy; it had no intention of going away,
and we’ve certainly seen that, if anything, it’s only gotten
bigger. There’s really not a question about the skills issue
whatsoever; we’re getting thousands of people coming out of
computer sciences departments around the world, educated in Linux.
It is, in fact, a worldwide phenomenon, which is great, because,
fundamentally, IBM is a global company. We don’t just sell Linux
in one place. So a lot of the early concerns about it, I think,
quickly went away.
We had a few middle years, as we were sorting out what it really
meant; what the balance was with Linux and our other operating
systems like AIX, what’s now called z/OS; I mentioned the 500
products – well, you know, it took a while to actually get those
products on that platform, right? On Linux platform. Primarily, the
– our two main strategic Linux distros, being from Novell and Red
Hat.
And then, what I’d really say is that, you know, the last couple
of years, and, certainly, as I’ve started to focus on this, is I’m
amazed at just how much Linux and, more generally, open source, has
been mainstreamed throughout the IBM corporation. Right? So we
don’t have a Linux department, right? Now, I focus on this, just
to keep driving this, but, you know, we have hundreds of developers
who work on Linux; we have thousands of people who use Linux. We
have over 30,000 people using Linux desktops in IBM, right? So
there’s no more of this question, “Gee, you know, is it going to
be around for a while? Is it, you know, is it good in data centers?
Is it good on the desktops? It’s very heterogeneous. But I think
everybody at IBM knows it’s here to stay, and continues to offer
some great opportunities, and continues to grow as an operating
system. It’s a very healthy growth, industry-wide growth, year to
year. So, we’re very excited about it. We’re getting much, much
more comfortable about it, and, if anything, we’re looking for new
areas in which to apply Linux, to use Linux, in our offerings.
Jim Zemlin: Well, what are some of those hot spots? Where do see –
from an IBM perspective, where do you see real growth with Linux,
real emerging opportunities?
Bob Sutor: Well, I think – so, the desktop is one, certainly. I
think people have decided that they don’t necessarily want to pay a
whole lot for a desktop. I think most of the productivity software
that people need is there one way or another, whether it’s open
source or it’s a free alternative, like, Lotus Symphony, which has
a word processor, a spreadsheet and presentation program. That is,
while there are certainly a few exceptions around device drivers and
a few proprietary applications that are not on desktop Linux, for
many people, particularly in business, Linux does just fine. And
then there’s the, you know, the one word that everybody’s talking
about, which is cloud. Right?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: Personally, you know, the first question I would ask about
cloud computing—if you’re talking about operating systems—is,
why wouldn’t you run it on Linux? Right? I mean, all the
characteristics of what you’re trying to do – you’re
delivering, possibly, lots of different types of workloads with high
quality of service, good performance, good availability, good
security. To me, that spells out Linux, right? To start with. So,
you’d have to convince me, that is, to run something in a cloud
that wasn’t running Linux. Particularly if you’re talking about
some low level things. And what’s enabling that, of course, is
Linux is great with virtualization—all the different flavors,
frankly, of virtualization. When we saw each other the other day, in
San Francisco, I was talking about Linux being virtualized above,
below, and sometimes to the side of other operating systems.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: It’s very much true. So, we’re finding that because
of the very high modularity of Linux, the quality of Linux, it can
just be applied to solve a lot of different problems. But I think,
personally, I think desktops are going to be very hot. And I think
just, generally, deployment of Linux, within clouds—even if people
don’t know it—will be extremely high.
Jim Zemlin: Let’s back up to the desktop for a second, because,
while, as you know, I’m a Linux advocate, and I’m constantly
talking about how Linux on the desktop is a great opportunity, and
increases every year, there are lots of people out there who are
cynical about this, you know, sort of, well, “We’ve heard this
all before: There’s – you’ve got Lotus Symphony you’ve got a
productivity suite; you’ve got a rich desktop; we’ve solved our
driver issues here.” What is – what’s the holdup, I guess, is
the question here. Why is 2009 a breakthrough year for the Linux
desktop? Why does the future hold a much higher growth curve for
Linux on the desktop from your perspective?
Bob Sutor: You know, I would translate it – well, aside from Linux
being very capable, right? So I mean, that’s a basic question, is,
does it give you what you want?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: Then, the second question is, can you sell it? Can you
convince people to actually use it? I think a lot of it will come
down to straight economics. Right?
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: Linux runs very well on older hardware, for example. So
if people in these economic times are not particularly looking to buy
new hardware, Linux is appropriate. Now, Linux also runs on new
hardware, in particular, Linux runs on netbooks…
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: …and a lot of people are looking at using that as a way
of providing their employees with, if you will, just enough computer…
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: …to get their job done. It’s small enough; it’s
light enough; and so forth. I think the traditional desktop
alternative, in the singular, for the most part, is just going to be
too expensive for a lot of folks, either in its current configuration
or the future promised configuration as well. And so for these
reasons, I think a lot of companies are starting to look at Linux as
a potential desktop replacement for a lot of folks.
Now I think it’s very important that organizations or companies
don’t go and say, “Look, do we have to give everybody a Linux
desktop?” You have to really look at what you do in the company,
and what your people do within that. You know, you may be able to
break the folks down in your company into three, four, you know, more
different types of roles. And you can ask for each role, you know,
is it appropriate for them to use a Linux desktop? So if someone is
sitting in a call center, what is it about any particular type of
desktop that makes sense for them? You know, maybe you want them to
be able to walk in, sit down at any desk whatsoever, and bring up a
desktop. So there, Linux, first of all, would work straight out
because of its good connectivity, access to the internet, things like
that, but increasingly, Linux is being virtualized as a desktop.
We did something with Ubuntu and Virtual Bridges last December, that
attracted far more attention than we imagined when we first announced
it, and that is, the notion is, you have a relatively small desktop
manager on your machine, however big it is; it’s well less than a
megabyte; what’s really running is your desktop, but it’s on a
server someplace, right?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: The performance is very good; we’ve been doing this for
years—I mean, going way back to things like (Xterms) and all this
sort of stuff. So the technology is mature. And for certain types
of people, this is exactly what they need. They could be students;
they could be call centers; they could be salespeople. So I think as
people now are forced to get far more specific about thinking about,
as I said, the roles; the types of hardware these people will be
using, whether it’s new hardware or old hardware; do they really
want to pay a certain amount of money for their software? I think
Linux will be a very attractive choice. I think we’ll see probably
a few very large conversions, but I think what we’ll see is the
rate of just the grassroots people finding it makes sense, moving to
it. That’s what I really think is – that we’ll see there –
that’s how we’ll see the growth.
Jim Zemlin: Do you think that once an enterprise does get to, you
know, trial some of this inlet’s say, a non-knowledge worker, or,
sort of, in a, sort of,– use-case specific scenario, that that is a
vehicle to give them, sort of, a taste of greater possibility for
them? Do you think that’s what it can take to get, you know, then,
a Linux desktop into that knowledge worker, into that traditional
stronghold of the person who needs to have the entire office
productivity suite, that needs to have, you know, their exchange
server tied into an Outlook client and so forth?
Bob Sutor: That’s right. I think, you know, I think people do have
to examine what their dependencies and, shall I say, lock-in
situation is right now?
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: And make plans to either extricate themselves from that or
force their vendors to be somewhat more flexible in the use of open
standards.
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: I spoke to a CIO this morning, and we were talking about
this, you know. He said that Linux wasn’t broadly used through his
organization, yet. However, he himself used it. And he used it as
an example and as a personal proof point.
Bob Sutor: So the more we have technically-minded (CStar) people,
doing this type of thing—I guess, (CStar O) people—the more
comfortable they will be, you know. I hear more about people who may
have traditional desktops in – at work, but then as I’m walking
out the door, they say, “Oh but, by the way, I use,” – you know
– “Linux at home.” And things like this.
Bob Sutor: So it’s slowly sneaking in there. Let me also throw in
one other thing here, too. You’re aware that we spent a fair
amount of time over the last few years talking about this
OpenDocument Format stuff.
Jim Zemlin: Absolutely.
Bob Sutor: Right? Why did we do that? Why did we so love, you know,
that particular XML, you know, format? Well, we did it for several
reasons: One was, in fact, it was a very good format. Second is, is
that, it was a very good way of talking to people about the value of
open standards and interoperability. But what it also was, is
because productivity applications, like word processors, are so
important to people around the world, by driving something like
OpenDocument Format, it means you could have an organization that
used these tools, and some people could be on Windows, and some could
be on Linux, and some could be on the Mac, and some could be on
iPhones, and some could be on Android phones, and so forth and so
forth. So that standard, I think, was very important in breaking
people’s – breaking down their resistance, if you will, to moving
other – to allowing other platforms, like Linux, on the desktop.
Jim Zemlin: And what’s the current status of that for people who
aren’t as familiar? I think last year there was, you know,
obviously the big brouhaha about the ISO decision…
Bob Sutor: Right.
Jim Zemlin: …and ODF versus the – Microsoft OXML formats. And,
you know, since then, sort of, ODF – you hear about it
occasionally, but you don’t hear about it all the time. What’s
going on with ODF lately? Where are we seeing people adopt it?
Where is it being used in procurement language as an example, or
other trends that you’re aware of?
Bob Sutor: The best place to learn about this is at the
odfalliance.org, and what you’ll see when you get there, is that
governments around the world are really starting to adopt this. And
that’s been part of our strategy from the very beginning. You
know, it’s one thing to try to convince all the millions of
companies around the world to adopt this, and they may have different
reasons or excuses not to do that, but when you can start getting
governments to adopt open standards, because of their role in the
procurement procedures, and just within the procurement economy, it
becomes very important. That is, if you want to sell to a
government, but if you have to express it in an open document format,
then you’ve got to have software to support that.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So, I believe the number was—at the end of 2008—sixteen
governments around the world had now either mandated or strongly,
strongly suggested, using their own language, that the OpenDocument
Format be used. I personally am seeing it more and more; people may
know my particular involvements, so they might not dare send me
another format…
I’m seeing it all the time, as people exchange documents.
Certainly within IBM, it’s – I got to tell you, it’s really a
lot of fun for me, after the work of the last few years, is to get a
document from a very senior IBM executive—and it’s in ODF format.
{Laughter}.
Jim Zemlin: Right, right.
Bob Sutor: Right?
Bob Sutor: And so I think these things, you know, like, the
Symphonies of the world, OpenOffice.org, so forth, is just driving
adoption very well. And people are using it at home; you know, these
are – the software that supports this today – very attractively
priced {laughter} being zero. So you’re going to see a lot more
home users. I tell you, my children use it; my daughter has used it
in school, in college, without blinking. Why not? Right?
Jim Zemlin: But even in the UK, right now, you can get an entire
Linux netbook with OpenOffice and the works—for free, with a
service plan from a data provider over there. So hopefully, that
will spur more and more people to experience a desktop and some of
these alternative productivity suites. One final question on the
desktop and then I got lots more questions I want to ask you.
Bob Sutor: Okay.
Jim Zemlin: There is a school of thought out there that the desktop
is becoming irrelevant; that most people spend the majority of their
day in a web-based email client, or now an emergence in Google Apps
is obviously the most specific example of an online productivity
suite, albeit, fully featured as the offline comparables. But the,
you know, salesforce.com, SugarCRM, you know, pick your application –
you know, really, all of these are increasingly web-based
applications. Well, what do you think? Is the desktop no longer
important or do you have an alternative view?
Bob Sutor: No, I like looking at big screens when I’m sitting in my
office.
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: You know, it’s one thing when I’m in an airport or,
you know, I’m running between meetings, or something like that,
that I might want to check a smaller smart phone or something like
that.
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: That said, when I’m looking at a bigger screen, I may
very well be in a browser, right? So I think we have to think about
the types of activities we do versus what is the particular hardware
we’re using. And you align the device to where you happen to be,
right?
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: So there’s no way I’m going to use my lap top while
I’m driving, right, but if I happen to have a nice little console
there, with a little TV that’s hooked in with GPS and that type of
thing, and I can get live information, well, that is, quote, “my
desktop” while I’m driving – and things like that. So I think
we’re just seeing the types of devices much more attuned to the job
we’re doing at that particular time. Now, that said, what we’re
breaking – the dependency we’re breaking is where our information
happens to live.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So, if I happen to be sitting in front of a big screen
with a nice keyboard and a mouse, I’m going to like doing that. I
can sit in a comfortable chair; I can work a little bit faster, and
things like this; but increasingly, people are saying, they want
access to the same type of information—or somehow doing similar
tasks or subsets of those tasks from other places, right?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: From, I don’t write on my—I happen to have a
blackberry—you know, I don’t write novels on my blackberry; I
don’t write white papers on my blackberry, but I can resolve an
awful lot of my email on my blackberry, because the responses are
fairly short, and I can get back to people pretty quickly, right?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So I think the, you know, what we’re fundamentally
moving away from is this notion of a desktop—which is, kind of, a
big box and screen and big keyboard, and things like this, and much
more, just to the notion of information where we want the
information.
Jim Zemlin: But are we going to see an abstraction away from what
people typically think of the desktop any time soon, with things like
Google Gears or AIR or Rich Client Platform or just, you know,
through a rich web browser? Is that a future you can see or is it
going to be some combination?
Bob Sutor: Well, it’s always a, you know, there’s always the
question, well, will 100% of the people do that? Right? Or what’s
the percentage?
Jim Zemlin: Um-hum.
Bob Sutor: So I think we’re going to be very heterogeneous for a
very long time, and we’ll have a mix of things. I’m not trying
to be wishy-washy on the answer…
Bob Sutor: …I just think, you know, over the next few years,
certainly the online storage of documents, creation of documents, is
becoming very popular. You know, I’m really seeing a lot of that.
The uses of repositories for documents and new ways of sharing –
that generally falls into, you know, what we—and, of course, many
other people—call collaboration.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: And that’s the focus that they think of. So if you were
just one person, as an island, doing something, well, okay, that’s
interesting, you’ll use whatever environment you use. If, however,
you need to work with other people, in terms of creating or editing
documents or other types of things, then these other collaborative
tools make a lot more sense.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So you could be living in a browser completely, or it just
may be very good simultaneous editing on a document through other
tools. I think the jury’s out on it, Jim, to be honest with you.
I think we’re going to have multiple paradigms. I, for one,
generally speaking, I don’t like to have my information locked down
to any one laptop or desktop without knowing I can access it
somewhere else.
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: So when I’m working some place, my sense is, well,
that’s just where it happens to be for the moment, but it’s going
to live, if you will, in the cloud, fairly soon, and I’ll be able
to access it from anywhere else.
Jim Zemlin: Well, the one nice thing about all these emerging clients
when you look at whether they’re netbooks or an Android device or
any of the other, sort of, growing client-side technology out there,
they can, at least, all agree on one thing, and that’s on utilizing
Linux to create that new client that is enabling different
uses—whatever those may end up being—so, truly {laughter} that’s
good for Linux from our point of view.
Bob Sutor: That’s right. I mean, you know, the question I asked
before about the cloud is, you know, same thing for these other
devices: Why not Linux? Right?
Jim Zemlin: Right.
Bob Sutor: And I think most people are saying, “Hey – actually,
yeah.”
Jim Zemlin: Well, you could even ask the question a different way,
because everyone—although Google is certainly not the only cloud in
the world, and lots of different models
Bob Sutor: Exactly.
Continue to Part 2 of the transcript.
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