A New Front in the IBM-Microsoft Cold War?

The news from Eastern Europe yesterday was that the Cold War is heating up again – the Cold War between IBM and Microsoft. Big Blue is working with system-integrator partners to supply a "Microsoft-free" desktop PC to large customers like Aeroflot, the Russian state airline.

IBM isn't getting back into the PC hardware business. Instead, the plan is to install a software bundle being called "Open Referent" on white-box PCs. Open Referent will be based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop and a handful of IBM applications: Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime and Lotus Symphony.

Other than Red Hat and Symphony, it's not exactly clear to me what's "Open" about this – other than IBM's remarkably relentless ambition to gain a foothold on Microsoft's desktop territory.

Still the plan makes sense, at least partly because of its geographic element. IBM has chosen a battlefield where it has some real strength. Lotus Notes and Sametime aren't open-source software, but they have continued to do very well in European markets even though they have been pushed out of many U.S. companies by Microsoft's Exchange and Sharepoint.

European governments have been more receptive to open standards in general, and the Symphony productivity suite, with its roots in OpenOffice and Eclipse and its support for the ODF format, should do well in a fight against Microsoft Office there – especially since it enjoys a 100 percent price advantage over Office. (Or at least it should do well when it's finally released – the current beta of Symphony still has some obvious bugs.)

IBM has another advantage in this battle – it can put boots on the ground in the places where Open Referent is being launched. The announcement was made jointly with two system integrators, Vienna-based VDEL GmbH and Warsaw-based LX Polska, and appeared under a Moscow dateline. IBM's own Global Services division is still the largest technical consulting organization in the world.

Linux has had trouble making it onto organizations' desktops at least partly because it is supported less widely than Windows. The Open Referent campaign –with customers that include, in addition to Aeroflot, the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Rushotel hotel chain – looks like an effort by IBM to overcome that objection and create a showcase for its support within a defensible perimeter far enough away from Redmond to give new meaning to "remote desktops."