Infoworld: HP scoops Gelato into Linux:
“HEWLETT-PACKARD ON Monday announced the formation of the Gelato Federation, advancing its agenda to develop Intel’s 64-bit Itanium processor family as a commodity chip platform for the Linux operating system….HP’s hope for the Gelato Federation is that it will blend ingredients from the research community, the Linux open-source community, and Intel’s 64-bit Itanium chip family to solve problem of scalability, grid computing, and other architectures based on those three ingredients.
Dig deeper: www.gelato.org: focus on “real world problems in academic, government and industrial research.” Dig still deeper: Open Source Development Labs, of whom HP is also a sponsor. Mission: carrier class and data center Linux.
What’s going on? HP invests in two Linux based consortiums aimed at different market segments, unified around the idea of improving the performance of Linux especially on very high end hardware. Thought: they’re fighting other competitors at both ends of the server market by developing a high quality scalable operating system that is open and essentially commoditized.
Can they capture value? Right now, I think their issue is mostly getting back in the game.
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