According to a report in The Inquirer, they are in receipt of a copy memo  - "forwarded to us by an insider at IBM on the West Coast," as they say - from IBM's Chief Information Officer, Bob Greenberg, to his own IT organization. It encourages IBM execs to switch to a Linux desktop by 2005.

LinuxWorld has today contacted the two executives mentioned in the memo, Perry Riggs and Amy Chow, for confirmation of its authenticity. We'll bring you what they have to say in due course.

Here's the leaked memo in full:

SUBJECT:  On Demand Initiatives
FROM: Bob Greenberg

Team,

We have been on our journey to on demand for one year now. While we have made important progress in transforming our business and IT systems we must be even more aggressive in driving this transformation. I am writing to you today because I need your assistance on two key projects that are central to our vision of IBM as an on demand business.

First, our chairman has challenged the IT organization, and indeed all of IBM, to move to a Linux based desktop before the end of 2005. This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents. The CIO office, in conjunction with Research and SWG, is building the Open Desktop project office to lead this effort. You need to have people participate in this project. You'll want people that can bring together the business and technical perspectives from your organization. These individuals will work with the project office to surface business unit issues and requirements and to communicate information back through your organization.

Secondly, at the heart of our cultural transformation is the On Demand Workplace. The On Demand Workplace (ODW) will provide employees with immediate access to resources and capabilities in an integrated role-based work environment. As such, business unit specific portals, websites, stand-alone applications and capabilities need to be integrated into the ODW. To support this integration, the CIO's organization is structuring a Framework that will provide the set of definitions/standards for those building these resources & capabilities. This will ultimately provide a consistent user experience for all employees that runs on a common platform in a shared environment that leverages common services by all applications.

You will receive two invitations, one from the Open Desktop Project Office and the other from the On Demand Workplace Framework team. Please extend the meeting invitation to the individuals in your organization who will be representing your team on these efforts. The individuals assigned to these initiatives should understand your application portfolio, have contacts with your leaders in other geographies, and be able to asses the impact of these On Demand initiatives to your business plans.

If you have any questions or comments please contact the appropriate leaders listed below.

Open Desktop Project Office - Perry Riggs/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
On Demand Workplace Framework - Amy Chow/MountPleasant/IBM@IBMUS

These are ambitious projects that cut through all of our company and extend deeply into our external messages. I look forward to your strong support and participation.

Regards, Bob Greenberg

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