(PR excerpt) — 19,383 members of the Open Source community gathered in New York last week to learn about the latest Open Source trends, network with peers and test-drive the newest products. LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, the premier event exclusively focused on Linux and Open Source technologies, took place at New York City's Javits Center January 21-24, 2003.

To kick off its fifth year, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo propelled Linux and Open Source technology into 2003 with scores of case studies of successful enterprise implementations, new product introductions and a significant amount of educational content on a packed show floor.

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo attendees packed the keynotes and feature presentation to hear from some of the industry's leading companies.

In his opening keynote address, AMD President and CEO Hector Ruiz emphasized that the semiconductor industry needs to adopt a more collaborative business model and behave more like the Linux community for “true innovation.” IBM Senior Vice President and Group Executive Steven A. Mills assured the audience that Linux is deeply embedded in the infrastructure and is here to stay.. Keynoter Randy Mott, senior vice president and CIO of Dell Computer Corporation, described Dell's successful switch to Linux within the company's sales functions, but also warned that the industry needs to focus on constant, dramatic innovation to ensure progress continues.

Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann and Jeffrey M. Birnbaum took center stage to present their Financial Services Case Study Keynote, which outlined Morgan Stanley's recent Unix-to-Linux migration and resulting cost savings for its computing environment.

The Linux Financial Summit made a successful debut at LinuxWorld in New York, addressing Linux and Open Source solutions for the financial industry with three days of in-depth sessions. The Egenera and HP-sponsored Summit featured sessions hosted by Credit Suisse First Boston, Egenera, HP, Intel, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), Red Hat, Reuters and Salomon Smith Barney. Among the presenters was Larry Augustin, who led a panel entitled “Linux on Wall Street: Practical Experience Implementing Linux in Financial Services.” The panel highlighted real world examples from Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan.

Conference program participation was up from LinuxWorld Conference & Expo/New York 2002 by 64 percent, a testament to the operating system's increased visibility. For the first time, the conference program not only offered attendees a chance to learn about the latest developments to help their businesses achieve success by implementing Linux and Open Source Software, but also targeted specific industries (government, telecommunications and finance) to show how that success was achieved. From introductory to advanced subject matter, LinuxWorld offered attendees educational content through dozens of sessions such as the packed “Introduction to LDAP,” led by Gerald Carter, who directs the Samba team at Hewlett-Packard. A dedicated track on the latest security updates featured sessions presented by leading experts such as Jay Beale of Bastille Linux and Michael Warfield of Internet Security Systems.

The LinuxWorld conference program also offered a look at how Open Source software is impacting the government, along with different projects that are being deployed. Representatives from NATO, Development InfoStructure (dev-IS), Naval Oceanographic Office, US Census Bureau, project eGovOS, National Technology Alliance (NTA), Lawrence Berkeley National Lab/NERSC, Jefferson County, Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) gave firsthand accounts on how Open Source software is working for them.

The Open Source Product Excellence Awards, sponsored by OSDN and presented in conjunction with the UniForum Association and IDG World Expo, recognized nine companies for their innovation in the Linux and Open Source community. New categories this year included Best Front Office Solution, Best Cluster Solution and Best Sys Admin Tools.

Award winners include:

— Best Network/Server Application: SuSE – Linux OpenExchange Server
— Best Developer Tools: IBM – Websphere Studio Application Developer V.5
— Best Data Storage Solution: IBM – Tivoli Storage Manager
— Best System Integration Software: Microsoft – Services for Unix 3.0
— Best Security Solution: Computer Associates – eTrust Antivirus
— Best Open Source Project: Ximian – Mono
— Best Front Office Solution: Ximian – Evolution
— Best Productivity Application: HRsmart – Applicant Tracking
— Best Cluster Solution: Red Hat – Advanced Server
— Best Sys Admin Tools: SCO Group – Volution Manager
— Best of Show: SGI – Altix 3000

The Golden Penguin Bowl resulted in a win for the Nerds after three hard-fought rounds which were punctuated by humor. For the first time, a tie-breaker question was needed following the final round when both the Nerds and the Geeks managed to come up with enough points to earn a tie score of 11,500. Hosted by Damage Studios' Chris DiBona, Bowl participants included Jeremy Allison (Samba Team/HP), Gerald Carter (Samba Team/HP), Scott Collins (Mozilla), Danese Cooper (Sun Microsystems), Rob Malda (Slashdot.org), Jason Perlow (Linux Magazine), Stacy Quandt (Giga), Dan Quinlan, Adam Turoff (Turoff Research) and Art Tyde (Sputnik Communications Corp.).

The next LinuxWorld Conference & Expo takes place August 4-7, 2003 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.