To this day every IBM customer I've ever contracted for has also been a Red Hat customer. That even applies for mainframe shops. Sales reps and support and account managers at IBM and Red Hat had eachother on speed dial a decade ago since it was so common to work a ticket that involved both companies products, or sell a bundle that would include both companies software and/or hardware, etc.

My only question is what the hell took IBM so long in making the decision to buy them out. I've never been less surprised by a big acquisition than I was with IBM and Red Hat. The only surprising thing was that nobody outside of that space saw it coming.

They deserve credit but while IBM did spend lots of money on Linux around 2000, and that helped legitimize Linux. I feel that RH has always been the leader in this industry, and RH Linux was well entrenched in the enterprise long before IBMs big push. So IBM helped but they did not create it, in my view.

I would disagree with RHEL being entrenched by the time of IBMs big push. At the time, you were still more likely to see commercial Unix than Linux at large companies.

Red Hat becoming entrenched wasn't a guarantee in my mind until IBM made that big push. If you could point to a single event that made it likely Linux would take over, without a shadow of a doubt it would be the blessing it received from IBM. There were an enormous number of bigcorps that made initial investment in Linux after that.

IBM did not create that industry, though they certainly helped it along.

Red Hat didn't create the industry single-handed, either. They deserve a lot of credit but Linux succeeded because it was a group effort where there was a chance for a lot of players to make money (and opportunity to displace others).

IBM did a 1bn USD investment creating the market for Linux based enterprise infrastructure, "vendor independent" on all their server products (PPC, s390 itanic and once available x68 based servers), with all IBM software products (db/2, websphere, ...) available "certified" on sles, RHEL and some Asian localized Linux variants.

this created an immense Push on HP, dell, Dec, sgi, ... to follow suit

and oracle, sap, Software AG, anything serious.

this push and commitment b IBM was.so.relevant because it established Linux as a serious platform with enterprise level SLAs and mutual commitments for the full stack.

the 4d chess was to establish a solid consulting business for "consolidation" on the "single platform"

and it paid off immensely for IBM --- and for most others.

given the IBM market position around 2000 this was pivotal and prophetic.