LinuxWorld readers know him as the international advisory board member featured in Kevin's Bedell's Premier Issue interview, but to his colleagues at IBM he is officially "vice president for Linux strategy and market development : Scott Handy.

His name featured prominently earlier this week in The New York Times.

In an article entitled "I.B.M. Helps Promote Linux" the Times's Steve Lohr opened with the memorable statement that "Linux is a rising star in the geeky back office of computing."

Its gains, Lohr wrote, have come "as an operating system for the data-serving computers that run corporate networks and serve up Web pages."

But the Times article focused not on the server but on the desktop. Because, as Lohr went on to document, IBM and OSDL (the Open Source Development Lab, whose membership includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Intel) are beginning a drive to promote Linux as a serious alternative to Windows on the desktop.

It will not have been lost on Times readers that the article coincided with Samuel J. Docknevich's keynote speech,  "The Time Is Now for Linux on the Desktop," delivered at the Linux Desktop Conference that day in Boston. 

"A Trend with Traction"

"There is a lot of interest in Linux on the desktop from customers," Handy told the Times, adding "This is definitely a trend with traction."

Any inroads Linux makes on the desktop will probably come slowly, the article noted, before going on to explain that since the Windows desktop operating system and Microsoft's Office suite arguably "has far more features, and is far more costly, than most workers at many companies really need" then even its huge user base of some 300 million did not inoculate it against the challenge of Linux.  

Handy went on to tell the interviewer how Blue's Linux plan now is to use Linux as the desktop OS in a simplified computing environment "that relies on delivering, updating and maintaining desktop applications over high-speed corporate networks."

"Faster, low-cost telecommunications and improved Internet software make the transition possible," Handy said. "Deploying Linux and having applications centrally distributed and managed on server computers, using Internet technology, can cut the cost of owning a desktop machine in half or more," he added.

"The discussion with customers usually starts with Linux," Handy continued. "But the huge gains come from using this server-based architecture, which is made possible by these Internet technologies. And Linux is one of them."

Here is how the Times article concluded its coverage of LinuxWorld's (and IBM's) Scott Handy:

I.B.M., Mr. Handy said, is conducting dozens of assessments for corporate customers of Linux desktop use as part of a program to reduce costs. The companies, he said, do not want to be named because they have not decided to switch desktop technologies.

The Linux desktops tap into the applications on server computers, using a browser. E-mail, calendar, customer relationship management and word-processing applications are included. Mr. Handy said this kind of computing could be easily adopted by bank branch offices, sales people, insurance agents, auto dealers and others.

I.B.M. is trying it itself. About 15,000 workers use Linux desktops, mostly software developers and researchers. By the end of the first quarter of next year, I.B.M. plans to increase the number of Linux desktops to 30,000 as sales, marketing and administrative workers try it.

Still, Linux on the desktop has a long way to go. Shipments of Linux rose to 2.8 percent of desktop operating systems in 2002, up steadily from 1.7 percent two years earlier, according to IDC, a research firm. Windows accounted for nearly 94 percent of shipments last year.

• SYS-CON Radio interviews Scott Handy