As part of the effort, AIX users will have access to new operating system features as early as a year in advance of a version upgrade. Until now, they typically have seen a beta release three or four months in advance of the commercial shipment. But IBM last week said that it intends to make some of the new features planned for AIX 5.4, which is due in 2007, available for testing beginning in next year's first quarter.

"Instead of a big-bang release, what we're trying to do is give customers access to the code early," said Karl Freund, vice president of IBM's pSeries server line. The goal is to not only get new features into the hands of independent software vendors and users more quickly, but to also get early feedback on some of the concepts that the company is considering adding to the operating systems, Freund said. 'Open Community'

IBM is calling its approach an "open community development model," and it's establishing an AIX Collaboration Center in Austin as the focal point for the effort. The company said it plans to spend $200 million on hardware and development support for the center over the next two years.

What IBM is proposing "makes a lot of sense ... if it works," said AIX user Kenneth Ebbe, assistant to the CIO at the University of Wisconsin at Madison .

"What they set out to do with it and what they actually do with it can be two different things," said Ebbe, who is a former president of the Share user group for IBM shops. "But it sounds like they are trying to get the end users involved as quickly as possible and as broadly as possible."