Unisys Corp. will now support Linux on its high-end ES7000 series servers.

Unisys will offer two distributions of Linux on its ES7000 servers: Suse, from Novell Inc., and Red Hat from Red Hat Inc. Suse Linux will run on up to 32 processors, Red Hat Linux on up to 16, according to Steve Rawsthorn, Unisys vice president of sales and marketing for systems and technology in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Now I’m confused. Isn’t this the same company that teamed up with Microsoft for the infamous We Have The Way Out campaign (tagline: “Join the Escape from Unix”)?

Rawsthorn took pains to point out that Unisys is in no way turning its back on Microsoft Corp., supplier of the Windows operating systems that previously shipped on all ES7000 models.

Oh, really? So why the sudden “support” for Linux?

“We see this as an incremental revenue opportunity for us with Linux. We don’t see it detracting from what we do with Microsoft,” Rawsthorn said. The company was prevented from bidding for some contracts because it did not support Linux, he said.

Ah, now I geddit! So Unisys’ customers are reluctant to buy Unisys’ servers because they are savvy enough to realise that Linux is better in their data-centres than Windoze. It all makes sense now.