The news follows an announcement by Novell Inc that it is creating Project Hula, a new open source collaboration project based on its NetMail web-based email and calendaring product, and has committed itself to a four-year roadmap for its GroupWise collaboration product.
IBM and Novell are number two and three behind Microsoft in the worldwide market for integrated collaborative environments, according to International Data Corp, with Microsoft having taken the top spot from IBM in 2003, the last full year for which market statistics are available.
IDC last year attributed Microsoft with 46.4% market share, up 6.2%, followed by IBM with 42.7%, down 3.5%. Novell had only 7.0%, up 1.2%. However, IBM claims to have enjoyed something of a turnaround last year, with high double-digit growth in 2004 in the number of customers deploying IBM collaboration software on Linux.
That has prompted the company to commit $100m over the next three years to encouraging and nurturing that interest, building on the $1bn the company invested on Linux development during 2001.
The $100m will be spent on ISV support programs, channel and partner programs, R&D, and marketing and promotion for its various collaboration products, including WebSphere Portal, Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, and IBM Workplace.
Workplace is already seen as a challenge to Microsoft’s position both on messaging and collaboration servers, and on the desktop, as it represents IBM’s strategy to provide organizations with client desktop productivity and collaboration software from the server, separating client applications from the desktop hardware.
Next quarter the company is expected to roll out Workplace Collaboration Services, an integrated collaboration environment including the latest version of the company’s Workplace Client Technology, a client-side framework for the development of rich server-based client applications.
