Submitted by “Whatever the reasons behind the formation of the Microsoft-Novell technology partnership announced last year, it’s helping Novell SuSE Linux gain at Red Hat’s expense, according to a research study due out next month. The Yankee Group 2007 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Survey says that Novell’s SuSE Linux is ‘mounting a serious threat to Red Hat’s heretofore unassailable dominance in the Linux market’.”
While Suse Linux Enterprise Server and Redhat Enterprise Linux Server do compete on the same playing ground, Novell has many other products which Red Had does not have, products that play in the same domain as some of Microsoft’s own products. These are mainly GroupWise, ZenWorks, and IdentityManager. Ignoring the ill will generated by the Novell/MS deal, Novell still has plenty of products which run fine on Linux. If you’re looking at a single vendor solution for Linux, Novell is hard to beat in terms of their technology. However, that’s not what wins out always…
Also, the Yankee Group isn’t exactly known as impartial. I don’t know if this is good news or not for Novell, considering the source.
More fud from the fud factory. How does more people using Novell equal less people using Red Hat? Last time I checked, Red Hat sales were still going up. So are Novells. Also, where is all this new software that is suppose to integrate MS and Linux? Havent seen that yet either.
So true….Damn Novell…
Yes, Laura DiDio is a convicted FUD artist in the eyes of the Linux community, but I think that this report is more or less on the mark.
You’re right. Both Red Hat and Novell are growing. Linux is growing. If you’re a Linux-oriented vendor and you’re not growing, you’ve got a huge problem. The key here is that Novell’s rate of increase in growth is increasing whereas Red Hat’s is decreasing by about the same amount. Red Hat is only negative at the third derivative of growth (or the fourth derivative of revenue). Both are concave-up in growth, which is pretty much as good as it gets financially… except Novell is getting more concave-up as time goes on, at the expense of Red Hat. Such metrics are only valid of larger periods of time than are being considered in this study. Don’t read too much into them, although they could be an indicator of future performance (maybe).
So far Novell has shipped VB macro support for OpenOffice as a part of the interoperability deal. In addition, the deal has allowed Novell to dramatically increase its staffing for the Mono effort. Miguel argues that the technical collaboration between MS and Novell on Mono could be better. Many have noted the absence of Exchange interoperability in the agreement. However, Microsoft is being forced by the EU to release specifications for Exchange, so this won’t be a big deal.
Bingo, I wouldn’t believe a thing that came out of this mob of paid for opinions. If they told me fire was hotter than ice I’d be heading the freezer with a box of matches and a thermometer.
The only thing of any value that comes from Didio et al is the occasional early look at this season’s MS FUD campaign (credit where credit is due, these people will usually be on message before the rest of the paid for mouthpieces. Shame Forbes shame, pick up the pace, though Rob Enderle is usually in the game too).
So I guess the question is: is this just a plain ol attack on RH type move or more of a ‘see, partnering with MS is good for business’ type move?
Edited 2007-03-27 03:59 UTC
Far as I understand, server market is growing, there are more servers each year. There are more servers of each platform. But, total Linux share is not growing, and Novell share has grown, in relative numbers, at the expense of other distributions.
That is how I understood the article.
Note that Windows Server 2003 has full UNIX environment built in by default, with X server, Motif libraries, shell, usual UNIX programs, etc. Some UNIX people could find what they need, without moving to Linux. Just link Windows server, Linux is not UNIX, and dividing lines have became blurred.
Good lord what a worthless organization:
Is the ever so trustworthy Laura “Didiot” Didio involved here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_DiDio
She has taken sides, just like the most of people on this forum. Why should I trust anyone who has taken sides ?
Just take the following as example
Personally, I have yet to find a sysadmin/engineer that, after having migrated to a *nix platform, then goes back to windows. Especially when dealing with email.
For a sysadmin to even consider migrating to a another platform, that admin will want to have training and/or personal experience with the new platform. Decisions, like migration of email (mission critical to all but the smallest of companies), is never taken lightly and is usually driven by very real technical issues.
Exchange, all though gaining in reputation, still has one of the worst (perceived?) records for reliability among sysadmin, at least the ones that I have spoken to. Couple that with the exstream difficulty of recovery from corruptions, and you have a very compelling reason to not go back to MS.
Haven’t they heard of Zimbra and Scalix….Poor souls.
Everything you say if fairly true. However, I have no doubt that 12% (at least) of Windows Server to Linux migrations have wound up back on Microsoft. To have an 88% success rate in migrating customers between fundamentally different IT platforms is truly remarkable. I would have expected many more migrations to fail. The fact that Linux has been so successful in converting Windows shops is a testament to the power of open standards.
“About 12 percent of Windows users surveyed by Yankee who had “defected” to Linux are now reversing their decisions and coming back to the Microsoft fold” –
Its not 12% of migrated companies who are coming back. Its 12% of the surveyed crowd who had earlier migrated from windows to *ix are coming are coming back. That means almost 100% of people who migrated from windows are now coming back
There is a Sendmail for Windows, too. And POP and IMAP servers, too. It does not have to be Exchange.
DG
I think Microsoft Enterprise Linux is shaping up pretty well. And why does everyone give the Yankee Enquirer Group such a hard time?
>>Yankee’s study finds Windows usage remaining high among the surveyed base: 55 percent of the respondents noted that 80 percent to 100 percent of their servers are running Windows<<
So yankee is asking IT managers, who use 100% Windows, about SuSE vs Redhat? Does that make any sense at all?
Who else can one ask about servers ? IT managers are ones that make the decisions which server is to be deployed. This is not about hobists or NGO/activists. They don’t pay, and that means that they are not part of the market.
DG
>>Who else can one ask about servers ? IT managers are ones that make the decisions<<
I think you completely missed my point. This redhat-vs-suse survey asked IT managers who exclusely managed *windows* systems. What do *windows* managers know about Linux?
As far as we know, yankee group did not interview even one Linux system manager. Or, even one IT manager who managed even one Linux system. Not even one.
I wouldn’t trust the source of this information. However, from personal experience…. we tossed RHEL about 4 years ago and moved to SuSE Enterprise. Best move we ever made. SLES is just so much better then RHEL in so many ways.
The community may not be happy with the “deal” that Novell signed onto, but based on all you’ve read, do you honestly believe they give a rat’s deriere about what the community thinks? Not for a minute do they care about what the community thinks, they only care about being able to penerate the market better than Red Hat.
And guess what, the market they are trying to penetrate doesn’t give a rat’s deriere either about what the community thinks. They just don’t want to be sued, that’s it-that’s all.
So looking to the future, I it seems pretty clear to me that despite the fact that Laura Didio is a terrible analyst, and the data she used to surmise this is very suspect, I think she is right on this one.
It’s interesting that you assume the community and the market are two different entities…
Well, in my experience, the community, if it exists at all within a large corporation, is the developers and administrators working in the trenches, while the market is made up of the CIOs and other decision makers that actually make the buy decisions.
Actually, I am quite shocked by the number of IT guys I know at large corporations who don’t know how to spell Linux. One person in particular is supposed to be some kind of security expert, but when I described to him how I connect to my home pc from my office using ssh and iptables to keep intruders out, he had no idea what I was talking about, but I digress.
So, to sum up, the community is the universe of people selling or distributing Linux and the guys working for corporations that allow them to contribute to the effort, while the market is the bean-counters, lawyers and executive types that are writing the checks.
Edited 2007-03-27 01:10
You will be shocked even more by the number of IT staff that actually hate Linux. Many of them are MS certified, and Linux is not in their best interest, because their certification is worthless on Linux.
You will be shocked even more by the number of IT staff that actually hate Linux. Many of them are MS certified, and Linux is not in their best interest, because their certification is worthless on Linux.
From my experience, their certification is often times worthless on Windows, as well. If migration to linux helps cull the herd, that can’t be a a bad thing…
“””
It’s interesting that you assume the community and the market are two different entities…
“””
To a great extent, they are. There is a degree of overlap, of course. But do you really think that the folks around here who endlessly debate whether GPL or BSD are more “Free”, ogle at Compiz and Beryl, write the word Microsoft with a ‘$”, accept the words of RMS as though they were scripture, and jeer hatefully at Novell, are the ones making the final decisions about rolling out new technologies in the Fortune 500?
I certainly hope not.
Edited 2007-03-27 01:20
It’s interesting that you assume the community and the market are two different entities…
It’s interesting that you assume that the market is a single entity. The market is most broadly divided into producers and consumers. Every year, capitalism does its rounds and makes producers richer and consumers poorer. In particular, producers that produce jobs (corporations) get filthy rich and consumers who consume jobs (employees) get dirt poor.
The primary purpose of the consumer market is to serve as a vehicle for distributing money amongst producers. Consumers don’t create or destroy wealth, they merely move it around. That’s the way it’s always been, because consumers, by definition, don’t understand how money works. They think that money is scarce. In reality, there is plenty of money. It is jobs that are scarce. Producers compete for abundant money while consumers compete for scarce jobs.
Technology, globalization, and mass marketing have enabled consumers to redistribute wealth more efficiently than ever before. But consumers don’t understand how money works. They think that the idea is to save as much money as possible, so they use their money-moving power to make a few producers incredibly wealthy so that they get better deals on their various consumables and liabilities. But in the process they destroy jobs, which is ultimately the only thing that matters to consumers.
The most central problem for producers is that they need to find a market that has problems and solve them using as few employees as possible. Consumers only have one central problem, which is that they need jobs so they can consume stuff. Clearly this is not a match made in heaven. On the other hand, if one producer can solve the problems of another producer by allowing them to find yet another producer whose problems they can solve using few employees, then cashflow can be generated. Somewhere along the line, a producer might solve the problems of one of the few producers that actually markets goods or services to consumers.
But this doesn’t need to be the case. Consumers are not necessary for producers to move money around. They are merely the most effective way to do this. But if consumers don’t move money in your direction (because you aren’t big enough to provide the incredible “value”), then consumers are not your most productive market.
How does this relate to Linux and Windows?
Microsoft is a big producer that provides perceived value to consumers simply because they are big. Maybe this wasn’t the case 15 years ago, but it is today. But even MS doesn’t make their fortunes on consumers, since consumers don’t really care too much about their software platform. It’s not as important to them as getting a good deal. Microsoft could easily price consumers out of their product, so they settle for low margins on high volume. The cheapest and most available platform option for mainstream PCs is Windows.
Most of their gravy train comes from producers. Microsoft explicitly markets their products as enabling businesses to solve their problems with fewer employees. Their ability to market the Windows platform as such will determine their future outlook to a large extent.
Linux vendors, on the other hand, are small producers. In fact, they can’t even afford to employ enough people to create a product of their own. Fortunately, free software allows them to mold existing pieces into product that they can market as their own. Linux vendors have a formidable challenge selling their product to consumers. Microsoft is so big and the margins on OEM volume licensing are so small that it’s hard for even a Linux vendor to undercut them. Even if they do, they have to create the impression of added value, which usually requires big advertising expenses.
However, Linux vendors have a real opportunity marketing to producers. They have a product that costs them relatively little to produce and attempts to provide a comprehensive solution for helping producers solve their problems with fewer employees. Producers have real problems that require more than glitzy advertising or even ubiquity. If Linux vendors are to break the barriers that keep Windows entrenched in both the producer and consumer platform markets, then it needs to offer a value proposition to producers. Marketing to consumers would be a waste of money.
In free software, a community consisting largely of consumers is the engine providing the pieces of software at no cost. A Linux vendor must appeal to the community in order to maximize the benefits of community contribution. But the Linux community is different from the consumer market at large because it doesn’t require direct marketing. The community will actively seek out like-minded vendors and populate their feeder communities.
So the mission is two-fold: Market to producers, appeal to the community. Leave the consumers be. If they find Linux and realize its benefits, all the better. But expend no extra resources appealing to consumers beyond that which is required to appeal to the community. If Linux can gain a foothold in the IT infrastructure that drives producers, then the entire platform market opens up. Microsoft solves business problems, but they employ way too many people to do so. If Linux gains traction, they can’t really compete in the producer market, and there days will be numbered in the consumer market.
So which Linux vendor is doing a better job at courting producers? Which is doing a better job at appealing to the community? Tough call…
Novell is sitting on a gold mine with the one of the best kept secrets SLED on the desktop. Since Red Hat basically told the end user that Windows was a better options instead of developing and marketing towards the desktop. All of the fuss saying Novell is going down with MS and vise versa I don’t care who they partner with if it promotes a great Linux distro then so be it. At least they are responding to their customer who said they want both of them Linux & Windows the customer is always right.
Kudos to Novell then at least they are responding to customer needs instead of saying we got a server line up.
Edited 2007-03-26 22:49
mmm, lets see:
More products, more options, better interoperability with MS products, no surprise here, the market has spoken.
RHT
Market Cap: 4.57B
1y Target Est: 24.09
Last Trade: 23.78
NOVL
Market Cap: 2.47B
1y Target Est: 7.81
Last Trade: 7.15
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHT,NOVL&d=s
Indeed the market has. As for the various pet MS shops that talk to the Yankee group… most people stopped caring what they had to say a long time ago…
Ok, we hate Novell because they partner with Microsoft … but what if Microsoft doesn’t crush Novell like they think they’ll be able to? Say that Novell successfully pulls off an “embrace and extend” tactic on Microsoft, turning the tables for once?
And isn’t just having ONE major Linux business a bad idea? At least we have two strong ones now, not to mention that HP is making a nice little profit from Debian and Sun is increasingly interested in Ubuntu.
“… defected to Linux are now reversing their decisions and coming back to the Microsoft fold …”
It’s technology, Yankee group. Microsoft is not like a freakin religion. You don’t “defect” from using one brand of toothpaste to another. Jeez. Loaded language like this should automatically raise a red flag for any discerning business-person who reads this repot.