Lotus fulfilling its pledge to support Linux

Combining its collaborative functionality with Linux' low cost of deployment, Lotus is now shipping Domino R5 for Linux.

The availability of Domino R5 for Linux marks the first established business collaboration software product offering support for the open operating system. The new release will offer developers of the alternative operating system access to powerful messaging, knowledge management and Web application capabilities. Because of the potential administration benefits, Linux has become extremely attractive to many organizations.

International Data Corporation (IDC), conservatively estimates that the Linux market will grow at an annual rate of 25 percent through the year 2003."Many companies have built distributed Domino-based applications which allow whole organizations to cooperate much more easily," said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's program director of operating. "The impact of this is that Linux may be seen as an acceptable platform for enterprise applications more quickly than would otherwise be possible."

"As an open source operating system, Linux will provide organizations with a way to experience the advantages of electronic collaboration," said Ken Bisconti, director of product marketing at Lotus. "More important, Linux has proved to be a highly reliable and manageable platform for organizations that want to share information and deploy self-service Web applications."

Earlier this year, Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, delivered a keynote address at Lotus' DevCon99