Big Blue is to run Linux training and educational services, offer technical advice, and provide access to IBM hardware and software from the new facility. Partners in the initiative include JD Edwards, SunGard, Sybase and Veritas.

IBM - which claims more than 40 financial services customers running Linux - joins Hewlett-Packard at this week's Securities Industry Association show in New York in promoting the free operating system as an alternative to Sun Microsystems servers.

HP is talking up its expanded relationship with Red Hat to deliver Linux on 64 bit Itanium2-based systems. Reuters has already announced that it will bring the new Linux version of its Market Data System to market first on the HP, Intel and Red Hat platform.

Mike Sayers, chief technology Officer, Reuters, says: ”Our customers see Reuters Market Data Systems on HP ProLiant Servers running Linux as an important way to reduce their costs of operation and improve their service, so it was quite natural that we should bring the two together."

Both IBM and Sun Microsystems have been busy at the SIA show, promoting a raft of new initiatives designed to meet the integration challenges of achieving straight-through processing in financial markets.

For its part, IBM is showcasing a new package dubbed WebSphere Business Integration for Financial Markets, featuring specific adapters, business process templates and shared management services customised exclusively for financial markets. Part of this entails the opening of an "Integrated Solution Center" in Germany, primed to demonstrate IBM's business integration and straight-through processing capability - with ready-to-implement customer proof-of-concept solutions.

Sun, meanwhile, unveiled eSolutions for STP, a three-tier approach consisting of dedicated consulting and integration services, best-of-breed software partnerships and a network of data centres for customers to build and test prototype solutions.