Speaking at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York, Bill Zeitler, head of IBM's server group, said that the company intends to release newly developed grid computing protocols in February.

Big Blue's grid computing strategy aims to develop protocols to link servers and storage systems to combine their processing power.

The new protocols have been developed by IBM alongside Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, the scientists to first launch the concept of grid computing.

According to Zeitler, the protocol's development and planned release is testament to IBM's commitment to the kind of open source development that spawned Linux.

"Next month, when we announce the open grid services protocols they will not be owned by IBM, they will be open," he said.

Linux is at the heart of this work, ensuring that on the computing grid the right power is allocated to the right computer users wherever they may be on the grid.

So far IBM has used tools developed by open source group Globus to build grid software for the research community. In addition, the UK government is working with IBM to build a national grid for collaborative scientific research linking nine universities.

Taking the structure of grid computing into the enterprise, Zeitler said he expected corporations to roll out what he called 'intragrids' which would keep all the computing and information gathering within a single enterprise.

Further down the line he explained that there could be other grids developed to suit other industries. These included availability grids from service providers and utility grids offering storage by IT services companies.

"But this won't happen without an open source movement. Open source is the future," Zeitler proclaimed.

Big Blue said that it has already come close to recovering the $1bn it invested in Linux last year. According to Zeitler, IBM has over 2,500 customers that have deployed Linux and those companies come from many industries including petrochemical, financial services, media, telecoms and others.

The company also announced at the show that it had recently signed a deal with online banking company E*Trade to supply IBM Intel servers running Linux to replace Sun Microsystems machines.

No value was put on the new contract, and E*Trade said it would use a selection of hardware from other vendors as well as IBM as it rolls out Linux throughout the company.