IBM Opens Linux Innovation Center in Kazakhstan

IBM opened a Linux innovation center in the capital city of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The mission of the IBM Center of Innovation for Linux and Open Standards is to drive the development and adoption of open standards and open source technologies among businesses and government organizations of Kazakhstan. The Center will help local software developers increase their Linux and open standards expertise and better connect them to the worldwide Linux community.

"Like many emerging markets, Kazakhstan faces the ambitious task of growing and enhancing its IT infrastructure very fast to match the demands of a new economy," said Inna Kuznetsova, vice president of Systems Software, marketing and sales enablement. "Using open source and standards-based computing, Kazakhstan can avoid the pitfalls of an expensive, proprietary infrastructure and build a more flexible IT foundation to expedite economic development. The Linux center will deliver educational and practical resources to bolster open source adoption and spur innovation."

The Center will help promote open standards that allow a variety of technologies to share information. Such interoperability will help deliver better goods, services and intelligent data. Open standards such as HTML, for Web and information structure; SOAP for Web services and SOA; and Open Document Format for office documents give businesses choice rather than limit themselves to closed, proprietary systems. Visit IBM's press room for full details