MANAMA , 4 June — On Sunday, I went to the "Ready for Real Business," Linux roadshow, hosted by IBM. Both globally and regionally, IBM has been proactive in increasing the profile of Linux. Last year, IBM announced plans to dedicate nearly $1 billion and 1,500 in-house developers to its Linux initiative. IBM also extended its commitment to Linux in the region by establishing a large Cairo-based development team to work on Arabizing Linux. Farid Metwaly, general manager, IBM Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan, gave IBM’s rationale for sponsoring Sunday’s Linux event.

"IBM is profoundly committed to the open source movement and believes that Linux is already a key platform for e-business. By working with the open source communities, IBM is adding relevant technologies and expertise to help enhance Linux, define standards and extend it to support more enterprise applications," Metwaly said. "This roadshow is a great opportunity for the growing community of Linux developers and adopters in the region to get together and share knowledge. The event will also strengthen the commitment of those who have already embraced open source software by bringing them together with their peers who share a common strategy."

The turnout for the roadshow was excellent. Bahrain’s Holiday Inn Conference Center had readied seating for 200 attendees. When the event began I counted 36 people standing at the rear of the room as the hotel’s staff scrambled to bring in extra chairs. I’d had to leave my home at 7:30 a.m. to make it to the roadshow on time. About one-fourth of the audience appeared to be from the Kingdom and they had made the same early morning trip. Even more impressive, the attendees were really eager to learn and excited, giving complete attention to the speakers.

Ali Saleh Al-Saleh, Bahrain’s minister of commerce and industry, got the event going with a powerful and well-received speech. Some of his comments were:

"If IT companies wish to develop in parallel to this ever-developing world that is today being referred to as the global village, then these companies must embrace new strategies. The first of these is forming strategic partnerships, and establishing commercial and technical dialogue. Needless to say, IBM is in the forefront in developing complete IT solutions and its strategy in developing electronic business will bring benefits to its partners, clients and the development of this industry in general

"Our businesses today depend on rapid technological developments. This is an important issue because of the role that technology plays in our daily lives and the economies of our countries. Not taking advantage of these developments will bring negative consequences that will place us at the rear, rather than the forefront — and this applies to both, the public and the private sectors.

"We call on private businesses to make sure they take advantage of these technologies (new e-business technologies) to sustain their competitive advantage and be able to compete internationally."

In a press conference after the minister’s speech, Dr. Rudolf Simmer, manager, Competitive Sales, IBM CEMA, explained that IBM believes that choice is a requirement, not an option in computing today.

"IBM is supporting Linux not because we like or dislike it," said Simmer. "We are supporting Linux because we understand the trends and requirements of our customers and there is a demand for open source."

Due to this perceived growing need, approximately four years ago IBM decided to begin investing in Linux. The company’s support of Linux is a move toward the concept of grid computing which IBM believes will change the way businesses use IT resources in the future.

"IT resources should operate as any utility does," said Simmer. "Grid computing is about sharing resources over the Internet, just as companies already share other resources like electricity. Our e-business on demand strategy will allow companies through the Internet to use the exact IT resources that they need when they need them. This requires open source code and open standards. Linux has brought open source and open standards to the computing world."

Globally, Linux is becoming increasingly important to a wide variety of businesses from brokerage firms to telecoms. According to IBM’s Ron Matlock, sales executive in scientific and technical computing, Saudi Aramco is in the process of installing the largest Linux cluster in the Middle East. It will be used to help solve seismic imaging problems. Matlock said that worldwide, in the past 18 months IBM has installed 10,000 Linux server nodes for the petroleum industry.

While the IBM Linux experts were interesting and gave informative presentations, the star of the roadshow by a wide margin was Dr. Khaled A. Al-Ghoneim, chairman of the board of directors, Saudi Computer Society.

In 1996, Al-Ghoneim installed the Linux operating system on 50 new Pentium machines at King Saud University creating the first major Linux lab in the Kingdom. In 1999, he was instrumental in founding the Saudi Linux Group as part of the Saudi Computer Society.

In his presentation at the roadshow, Al-Ghoneim discussed some of his experiences with Linux. He pointed out that 1,200 students at King Saud University are on a Linux-based mail server that rarely causes any problems. However, the faculty mail server, which is based on MS Exchange, needs rebooting every couple of weeks. Al-Ghoneim emphasized that Arabization is vital for Linux to succeed in the Middle East. He is pleased with the way that the Saudi Linux Group has become a force in the Arabization effort. He felt that it shows how a small group of interested individuals can make a difference.

Al-Ghoneim concentrated his presentation on the security aspects of Linux. He advised that open source systems are far more secure than closed source simply because more people are examining the code. He noted that most hackers are out for money, fame or the challenge of cracking code. They have the time to search for security holes in an operating system.

"Good people don’t have an incentive to spend their lives trying to stumble upon a hole in closed source code," said Al-Ghoneim. "Bad people have nothing else better to do."

The audience at the roadshow shook their heads in agreement when Al-Ghoneim reminded listeners about backdoors that were found in certain applications once their code became open. Most of those backdoors were not intentional security breaches. They were simply mistakenly left behind by the original developers. But when code is closed it is difficult to search for backdoors into systems, whether such secret programs are intentional or unintentional.

Al-Ghoneim just laughed at the thought of some companies who are now claiming that they will open their code to specialized users like ministries of defense. He claimed that with the hundreds of millions of lines of code that go into creating many programs, no one organization would have the resources to check the integrity of the code. With open source, from the start, developers around the world are constantly checking and rechecking the code. That adds up to tens of thousands of individuals checking code. If there is any problem in open source, the central authority is quickly notified, a fix is immediately worked toward and posted. Even the fix is then inspected.

"Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and the rapid evolution of source code," said Al-Ghoneim. "Open source standards will allow the same explosion in applications as opening PC standards allowed the explosion in the hardware market."

While I enjoyed the "Ready for Real Business," Linux roadshow and I hope to see more Linux events in the region is the future, I have one criticism. I noticed that all the speakers’ presentations at the roadshow were done with the use of a Microsoft operating system and/or application. For Linux to succeed it must be supported by practical examples.

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