Bob Sutor Q&A at ComputerWorld

Bob Sutor -- IBM VP of standards & open source -- has an interesting interview up on ComputerWorld today.

If Sutor's remarks are indicative, IBM's view is of a world where customers are going to access IT know-how from both the Open Source & Free Software world as well as from the commercial software and legacy Windows world.

The world is going to be hybrid for a long time. People need to view it as an optimization problem: What is the right mix of Linux, other open-source and proprietary [software] in terms of the economics, my staff, my partners? Anyway, I wouldn’t ask, ‘How do we get more Linux in retail?’ It’s how do we get it thoroughly open-source and standards-based so there’s a level playing field. That way you can see where open-source makes sense, and where proprietary products make sense.

This of course is coming from a mathematician, for whom making a PB&J is an optimization problem.  But it is, above all, sane.

IBM's Workplace, coming soon this year, will be the practical productification of this idea. As such it will come to you in a hybrid world via Java or through a browser, not caring what operating system culture you belong to.

The concept is development, deployment & configuration nirvana, but it needs to be elegant, transparent and lovely to the users. If it is, a decent price will be justified.

One would normally be concerned that Workplace represents a deep infrastructure tie-in for the desktops, but since it is targeted directly at large-org users of Microsoft's collaboration and productivity systems there will be little alarm and great gasps of delight at the new modular plugability and introduction of open standards.