Turbolinux Discovers China

Not doing very well on the US market, Turbolinux announced they are looking to China's smaller cities for new customers. "We are facing fierce competition from Novell and Red Hat, so we want to differentiate ourselves," said Claude Zhou, general manager for Turbolinux China. While Novell and Red Hat have more resources, they are concentrating on China's major cities. This creates the opportunity for Turbolinux to market to customers in China's smaller cities and provinces.

"Given the growing popularity of the Linux server OS market and positive indicators for grows set forth in market analysis, [Turbo]linux plans an aggressive expansion in the commercial and business market in China, as well as in India, Vietnam and other Asian countries."

To accelerate its "High Availability Enterprises Cluster Software" project, Turbolinux applied for and received a subsidy from a technological innovation fund created by the Chinese government and approved by the China State Affairs Administration. Moreover, Turbolinux has launched "Turbolinux HA", a server OS and software cluster, across Sichuan Province, and has managed to convince state-run Sichuan Province Health Agency, Sichuan Mobile and Sichuan Netcom Communication to adopt it.

The company is also planning to shift its focus from only providing the Linux operating system to offering packages of open-source software.
"In the future, Turbolinux China will derive the majority of its revenue from open source applications rather than the Linux operating system," added Zhou.