"A Solaris-to-Linux migration is nothing new at IBM. In fact, since IBM began its Linux journey several years ago, we estimate that more than 3,000 of our approximately 12,000 Linux customer engagements have been with customers moving from a Solaris environment to Linux," said Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide Linux for IBM, as IBM in conjunction with Red Hat yesterday announced the introduction of a Solaris-to-Linux server migration program that includes a 'Solaris to Linux Migration Factory,' and additional solutions and support offerings designed to help customers migrate from Solaris to multi-platform Linux servers.

The service includes a pre-funded, pre-sales migration assessment from IBM Systems & Technology Group for qualified customers that will result in no charge to the customer for the assessment, "and will help them answer difficult questions and determine the right migration strategy to Linux," says IBM. Once the assessment is completed and the customer decides they want to continue with the migration, then IBM's 'Migration Factory' is engaged.

IBM has completed more than 500 HP/UX and Solaris-to-AIX customer migration engagements since early 2004. The service is aimed at enabling customers in all industries to more quickly migrate to a Linux environment, "including those in the Wall Street and financial services sectors," says IBM.

IBM also announced yesterday that another wave of 22 financial services ISVs have committed to porting 48 Solaris applications to Linux on IBM's eServer platform since last year, of which 33 are already available as of today. Last year, IBM identified a total of 24 ISVs and 58 applications in interviews with 23 of the top Wall Street companies as the most critical applications to target for Solaris-to-Linux porting.

The adoption of Linux by formerly Solaris-exclusive ISVs, says IBM, is expected to expand even faster with the recent introduction of IBM eServer Application Advantage for Linux, also known as the Chiphopper offering, the IT industry's first combination of support and testing tools that is helping to deliver on the promise of a cross-platform Linux solution for ISVs. Since its introduction in February of this year, the Chiphopper offering has resulted in more than 100 new applications being available on IBM eServers running Linux.

While the Chiphopper offering focuses on helping ISVs to move their applications to Linux, today's Solaris-to-Linux customer migration initiative - says IBM - is designed to help enable customers to move workloads from Solaris to multi-platform Linux faster and easier than in the past.

"With volumes like these, we really needed a factory approach. And based on our experience, the number-one issue is that customers don't know just how easy a UNIX-to-Linux migration is, which is why we are offering to cover the cost of the initial assessment for qualified customers. The credibility of our migration specialists working with real customers wanting to get to Linux, combined with our cost effective Linux solutions and capabilities, usually results in a customer either embarking on a successful migration with us or with one of our business partners," Handy explained.

"Enterprise migration from Solaris to Linux is inevitable. Working with IBM we will make the transition from Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as efficient and easy as possible," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat. "The Chiphopper and Migration Factory programs offer clear concise plans to both customers and ISVs to make the move."