Is IBM gearing up to disrupt Microsoft Office? Apparently so. In fact, Big Blue is bringing Lotus Symphony 1.2 — an open source application suite — to the Mac.

After close to two years of development and preliminary marketing in India, IBM's Smart Cube application appliances went on sale last Tuesday in its home market in the United States, moving one step closer to a worldwide launch.

Windows is still the server platform of choice in India but enterprises, especially small and midsize businesses (SMBs), are increasingly favoring the Linux operating system, according to a new report Monday by Springboard Research.

Blue Cloud itself consists of Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating-system images and Hadoop parallel workload scheduling, all supported by IBM Tivoli server-management software.

"'Software as a service' means that you think of a particular server as doing your computing for you. If that's what the server does, you must not use it! If you do your computing on someone else's server, you hand over control of your computing to whoever controls the server.

Dell is planning to offer small and medium businesses (SMBs) globally pre-configured bundles of hardware and open source software to run their businesses, according to an executive at the company.

Cisco announced a Linux-based WiFi router touted as the first 802.11n dual-band clustering access point for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The Cisco AP 541N Wireless Access Point includes 802.11n, gigabit Ethernet, "robust" security, voice roaming, and clustering technology, enabling a single point of administration for multiple access points.

Ubuntu Linux is moooovin’ on up in the Linux server neighborhood. When Sun announced a major open source initiative targeting small and midsize businesses this week, a lot of people failed to realize that Sun would include servers certified for Ubuntu. Here’s the scoop.

Novell today introduced a new suite of workgroup applications for small businesses, based on "proven," open standards-based software. The Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition includes Linux server and desktop components, and bundles email, collaboration, and other open-source office products.