The Bloor Perspective: Linux's OS/2 lesson, smart internet appliances, and Al Gore's email

OS/2 was IBM's flagship operating system until Microsoft came along and ruined it all. True, IBM adopted the new user-friendly OS as if it were a long lost child, but the suspicion was that Big Blue accepted the dominance of the Windows operating environment with a forced smile on its face and has been searching for an alternative to support ever since. Now the Linux white knight has come charging over the horizon and offers IBM a weapon with which to take on its old adversary once more.

IBM has adopted Linux with a passion that can't be matched by any other organisation. It is promoting Linux very positively in a way that businesses of all sizes cannot ignore and it is implementing the operating system just about everywhere. Back in April 2000, John Patrick, IBM's VP of Internet technology, pointed out that Linux has the capability to be disruptive in that it challenges the accepted methods of building ebusiness solutions.

IBM's view is that Linux offers businesses an opportunity to break away from all forms of operating system dependence. The aim is to establish Linux as a standard operating environment so that the focus can shift to applications with no portability issues. The lack of variety when it comes to the availability of business applications is only a temporary situation that will be remedied very quickly once larger businesses start to commit to the Linux environment.

All of this makes a certain amount of sense, but it is still too easy to see IBM's sudden zeal for Linux as a stick with which it intends to beat Microsoft.

*The not-so-smart home*

If we are to believe the hype that is currently in circulation, all of our kitchens are going to need an overhaul in the next few years as we rush headlong towards the use of internet appliances. Already the ideas of extended function TV sets are commonplace and Electrolux will happily sell you a refrigerator that allows you to build a shopping list as the contents are removed.

The obvious question concerns how many of us actually want this stuff and how much we are going to be forced into buying it from companies who include the technology as features.

More importantly, however, there is the question of how all these devices are going to be kept running. Who do you call when your fridge fails to re-order the strawberry yoghurt? Is it the fridge supplier, the software supplier or the ISP? For somebody, somewhere, managing these devices is going to become a major issue.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that suppliers of systems management solutions are jumping onto this bandwagon, ever-looking to broaden their markets by finding different things to incorporate into their managed networks.

Tivoli Systems is probably at the forefront of this management revolution with its 'pervasive management' and 'Manage Anything, Anywhere' messages, but others are also working in this area with embedded agent technology that will allow status information to be passed to a central server.

This has not been thought through properly. In general, the consumer has little interest in the underlying technology associated with any form of appliance. The interest is purely functional and internet connections will add little in the way of useful capabilities. In addition to this, embedded management agents will require a connection to a management server.

Reporting problems back to the manufacturer will require ISP connections - not yet free of charge in most countries - and the ability of the manufacturer to respond will have to be a whole lot better than it is today.

Overall, the value of managing consumer goods has not been established and one can't help feeling that the management tool suppliers are wasting valuable resources on the development of solutions for internet appliances just to be seen to keep up with the technology.

Perhaps they can see a market with the suppliers of the appliances that we cannot. Whatever the situation, they are in danger of moving their focus away from the business user to the consumer who will be even less interested in the management tools than they are in the devices themselves.

*Getting Gore's back-up*

Why is it that nobody ever cares about back-ups until a recovery is required? Now we have evidence that this is a deficiency at even the most critical levels of business. The US Justice Department has found that email messages sent to US Vice President Al Gore between March 1998 and April 1999 have been lost forever as a result of a 'technical error' in a back-up system.

The problem relating to Gore seems to stem from a basic error in configuring a Lotus Notes environment. It meant email messages were missed when making back-up copies. In total, it is estimated that nearly a quarter of a million messages have been lost.

The omission of data from back-ups is one of the two most common back-up errors - the other being a failure to check that the data was actually written to tape successfully - and it shows that the contractors used by the White House did not adhere to basic operational procedures.

All of this may sound terribly obvious but it is clear that these simple procedures were not followed within the White House for more than a year. Any large organisation with hundreds or thousands of PC systems will have problems even identifying its mission critical data, more so when items such as email are not stored centrally.

Back-up and recovery are often considered to be 'dead management' functions because, more often than not, we can get away with it if they are not carried out correctly. But every now and then we need them - just ask Al.

* For more research see http://www.it-director.com