An industry that has long resisted IT automation got a double dose of medicine last week. Both Microsoft and backers of key open source initiatives laid out plans to push IT further into health care--plans that also put the Windows and Linux camps on another collision course.
Red Hat, the largest business Linux distributor, is teaming up with the health care sector's largest company, McKesson, an $88 billion-a-year pharmaceutical and IT supplier. Red Hat will provide a core of Linux and JBoss software geared to run McKesson's clinical applications.