Microsoft is about to lose another important client of its Windows operating system, an announcement made by an IBM representative at the Linux Forum 2006 said.

According to Groklaw.com, Andreas Pleschek, head of open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe, said during a presentation that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. This means that IBM will not switch to Vista, after the new operating system is launched. He also said that starting July, the company's employees will use IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platforms.

However, Groklaw says that the switch will take place gradually and that Windows XP will still run on some workstations for a period of time.

At the end of the presentation, Andreas Pleschek revealed that the laptop he used for the presentation was running a pre-release of their new platform, the Open Client. It is actually a Red Hat work station with IBM's new Workplace Client, which is built in Java on top of Eclipse.

If the statements made by Andreas Pleschek are true, Microsoft will receive another blow to its income, still suffering after Massachusetts' decision to give up on Microsoft Office and use open-source solutions such as Open Office or Star Office instead.

In September 2005, the Massachusetts officials had announced that they intended to introduce this decision and although Microsoft tried to make them change their minds, warning that switching to another Office suite would require time and money, at the end of the month, the decision became final.

Microsoft is not too comfortable in the UK either, as BECTA (The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) has announced at the beginning of January that it will soon scrutinize the company's software under a "value for money" review of their educational licensing programs.