Palmisano rides the penguin (into the IBM corner office)

[Warren Togami]

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/30/1454220&mode=thread

If people were worried about the influence of private companies on the Open
Source movement, they should become petrified. As of today, the largest Open
Source company in the world does $85 billion in sales and has a workforce
almost as large as the population of Cincinnati, Ohio. Sam Palmisano is
taking over at IBM and he's riding in on a lot of promises about how Big
Blue and Linux can make billions together.

      This week Lou Gerstner finally announced what everyone has known for
months: Palmisano will take over as CEO of Big Blue in five weeks. Following
the news, IBM stock tanked by nearly four dollars.
      It shouldn't have. For the change in leadership occurred some time
ago. Samuel J. Palmisano has been the power at IBM for more than 18 months.
Palmisano has been the in-house geek-in-a-suit who has driven IBM's embrace
of Linux for the last two years. In many ways, Linux was the platform
Palmisano ran on to get his new job.



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