Todd Spangler of Interactive Week postulates that, while Intel's new Itanium chip is getting muffled yawns from some quarters, for Linux vendors the architecture could represent a sterling opportunity to make much-desired inroads into high-end computing environments. Spangler writes . . .

“At the very least, this year's rollout of Itanium servers and workstations will help Linux developers get their collective foot in the door in enterprise accounts — if not actually win the business of customers that might have otherwise chosen Microsoft Windows or Unix operating systems.”

“Caldera International, Red Hat, SuSe Linux and Turbolinux all plan to release their 64-bit versions of Linux for the Itanium processor this summer.”

“Rob Enderle, research fellow at Giga Information Group, said information technology shops that run Linux are by nature early adopters of new technologies, so they would be more receptive to kicking the tires on a new microprocessor architecture such as Itanium and would also choose to test it with Linux. 'This is an opportunity, because of the timing, for the Linux folks to move in and around Microsoft,' Enderle said. 'Initially, you'd expect to see Linux get a lot of mind share from this' . . .”

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