On their blogs, Matt Asay and Savio Rodrigues are discussing whether IBM is using open source to diminish competitor margins. I think it is obvious that IBM does this, most notably with its Linux engagement, which is squarely directed against Microsoft (Windows). It is what I call a war over the share of customer's wallet, and open source plays a major role. The graph below shows how it works.
Read more on my personal blog. (Sorry, that's the better place for this blog entry; I have to mix and match SDN and my personal blog at times; feel free to comment here, however, if you think it applies more to SAP than the industry in general.)
