IBM Chief Backs Open Systems

IBM Corp. Chairman Louis Gerstner said Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and EMC Corp. sell proprietary computing systems that can’t survive in a world of billions of connected devices. In a speech delivered at the eBusiness Conference and Expo in New York, Gerstner said these technology giants--all IBM competitors--are facing an “inexorable” move to open-computing standards driven by the Internet. His main point was that their market leadership has been built on closed systems, and the marketplace now demands easy connectivity. The world’s largest computer maker is convinced, Gerstner said, that the rapid growth of small computing devices of all varieties will favor standards allowing every device to talk to every other device. He said Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM will invest nearly $1 billion next year to develop the freely available Linux computer operating system.