Linux profit: revenue impressive for HP, IBM

IBM was already well into Linux territory last year and was not only selling Linux-based systems to corporations but was also offering innovative Linux On Demand services where computing-as-a-utility fit the bill. The company announced last month that a beta version of DB2 is running with SuSE Linux on AMD's 64-bit Opteron processor. For the year, IBM calculated Linux sales of $1 billion, inducing HP's Carly Fiorina to make a more extravagant claim of $2 billion in Linux revenue at HP.