Slashdot Mirror
IBM And Intel Help Rescue SuSE From Insolvency
mutantcamel writes: "A report on NetworkFusion states that SuSE has avoided insolvency thanks to a fresh round of investment that raised $45.5 million for the ailing company. IBM and Intel
are among the players that have announced their support for the company. The rescue package comes after quite a turbulent time at SuSE HQ, but the company seems optimistic about the future."
"The rescue package comes after quite a turbulent time at SuSE HQ, but the company seems optimistic about the future."
I'd be pretty optimistic too if someone raised 45.5 million for my company. But seriously, why SuSE?
Insolvency: The state of being unable to meet debts or discharge liabilities; bankrupt.
I'm glad Suse is getting this help. They are really well liked in Germany, and a GOOD Linux distro.
A lot of questions left unanswered by the article.
So, what got them bankrupt? How many people do they employ? How big is their debt?
Why is IBM dumping tons of money on Linux right now? (Trying to buy a competitor to MS is the obvious answer, but that might not be right.)
Troll Like a Champion Today
works for Intel. They use a lot of Linux there. ~%90 of his work is done on a Linux box. They really like the idea of not being tied to microsoft in the server room. I just really wish that we had an Exchange Killer then I could start converting my clients to pure Linux environments. That would be cool.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I'm just wondering if anybody else is hating the fact that they might have to start liking Intel because of this.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The rescue package comes after quite a turbulent time at SuSE HQ, but the company seems optimistic about the future."
Yeah, I would imagine two Fortune 500 tech giants writing you a check for a substantial amount of money would tend to make you optimistic under any circumstances.
If this had just been IBM, one would have thought this might be the beginning of an "official" IBM Linux. Even with Intel in there though, does this mean IBM is shopping for a distro to get behind with their recent Linux push?
$45 Million is a truely disturbing ammount. Now is the time on sprockets when we dance.
Suse's biggest mistake was using that green frog in their advertisements and on their boxes. While everyone in the whole world was swooning over that cute and adorable Tux the Penguin, Suse had some cold and clammy unattractive green frog. From a PR perspective it was a big mistake. Everyone loves a Penguin, but folks are indifferent to frogs. More importantly, when folks see Tux, they say ``this is really cool--it's Tux''. It is instant brand recognition. On the other hand, when people saw the Suse frog they said ``what the hell is this? Sesame Street?''
I hope that by IBM and Intel throwing some weight behind a Linux distro. it will help it gain some ground.
By this I hope that with IBM's encouragement more directed development and standardization will occur along with a few more applications making it more appealing to others.
One of the things that helps keep linux like linux is that it does take some work to get everything working right, however this does frighten people away. Perhaps Intel's endorsement will help this image and make it easier to get things to work correctly.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
I figure they probably what to keep as much diversity as possible going. So IBM makes sense in a way.
But what about Intel? I'm not up to speed on their involvement.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Is there a good reason you don't mention debian? It is the choice of Taco et al. . .
When IBM announced they were to spend $1B on advertising this year I cringed a little. That money could have been used paying developers to develop free software they really like full time. Glad to see some of it is going to a good cause.
Liberty.
This explains the recent news that the founder of SUSE has stepped out of the company. Usually investors offer their help to suggest executives in the company and companies usually follow (!) these suggestions.
Ah well, its a good gesture, I probably will still buy an athlon over a p4 (1.4ghz chip for about 130 bucks, they just cut a lot of prices today) but it puts intel in a better light then before.
i suspected that SuSE was in trouble, glad that the are saved.
...
i'm using SuSE for a very long time and i like the distribution.
the future of SuSE seems to be good:
look here
and here
SuSE has put much effort into supporting development of open source projects like, kde, alsa, reiserfs,
hopefully the future will be better for SuSE, if they go, it will be a lost for the open source community.
between SuSE and Mandrakesoft! In a similar situation, Mandrakesoft has been bought (20%) by its community of users and is now traded on a European market. SuSE is more and more locked by rather proprietary companies. I wish them good luck!!!
This is the perfect example of the sort of corporate altruism I think we can expect to see over the next few years. As some people have pointed out, SuSE is one of the most popular European Linux distributions. It is in IBM and Intel's best interest to ensure that there is are a few solid European based distributions around for them to build their business on. It avoids vendor lock to a particular distro (Red Hat anyone?). It maintains a company doing the tricky task of localizing the bulk of Linux. Plus, that shop may later be used to help localize IBM software at a later date.
All and all, it is in IBM and Intel's best interest to have a thriving SuSE (and Mandrake, for that matter), regardless of whether the company is actually profitable. This sort of enlightened self-interest could lead to a sort of patronage system for some of the major Linux distributors.
NWFusion.com tried to forcefeed me 32 cookies to read the article, I think I have indigestion.
Ethics II Axiom 2. "Man thinks." B. Spinoza
Hm...only 1 or 2 millions would do...IBM, please?
Here's why...... SusE runs on zSeries machines: Linux for zSeries Don't let the UFOs abduct you.
Hate to say it, but it might have been better if they had gone under. It would have increased the chance of other companies like Mandrake and Red Hat making good profits. This new investment to keep Suse alive might just help cement a situation with no real moneymaking distro's.
...for all you longtime SUSE freeloaders to buy copies of their CDs. (Yes, I know it's free-as-in-beer to download, but do you want a new distro next year or not?)
Faster than you can mod this down.
Look, Stormix and Corel are already history.
Linuxcare has had all sorts of managment problems.
Mandrake and Suse both had layoffs not too long ago. The Suse prez just walked out. VA linux recently got rid of there hardware and dumped some people including Samba hacker Jeremy Allison. Now Suse is out of cash. It seems like every major Linux company is in the toilet now.
I wonder if this type of news is related with the departure (was he fired ?) of the previous Suse CTO and President. This was reported on slashdot yesterday or the day before.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Slackware never wanted to be a multi-million dollar commercial firm, so of course they're not. You measure success by the attainment of your goals, not by the attainment of someone else's goals.
(oh, and LinuxPPC and Turbolinux aren't dead either)
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I still can't for the life of me understand why they put everything in a bsd-like /etc/rc.config, yet still have a SysV style init. Maintaining information 2 places (links in /etc/init.d/rcX.d and also in rc.config) is bad. very very bad.
if they wanted to build a bsd-like system around the linux kernel, then why go half-assed about it?
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Well it's not a complete exchange killer, but Insight Server from Bynari isn't a bad replacement. It has had some big press lately. It doesn't use MAPI, only LDAP, POP3, IMAP, various standard protocols. Outlook works if you configure it correctly (very easy). It has a few drawbacks, such as the Outlook configuring, but overall it's a decent product. I've implemented it before and my clients were very pleased. It's $299 for 100 users, so it's not free but it's darn cheap compared to Exchange.
Hmph...
Business is Business and Business must grow, Regardless of crummies in tummies you know... -Onceler
I hate to tell you this, but Microsoft makes a killing for support of their product. Technet, for an average Joe? 475/yr. Fixing aol on a out of warranty system (2 service calls) 35 dollars an incident. Professional support for NT/2000 255-1000. Enterprise support? 10-10000 to A cool million. You can't make money off support? Cisco charges millions of dollars for premium support for it's products. That's just the service agreement, not including the products. The ONLY way to make money off of software is service and support.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
now. Too bad they copped out on America, because without America, they will not survive. And
the price of Euros keeps sinking lower and lower.
Hmmh, what does the currency exchange rate of Euro have to do with SuSE, esp. since they are not selling to US of A? If they did, it would be goog for them; same dollar price would get more euros etc., but...?
And as to USA being essential for survival; not necessarily so. With 5% of world population (although almost half of internet users AFAIR) it won't be the only player in linux-world for long. Poor countries have much more to benefit from the cheap OS than richer ones.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
They burn off some money like that because they give money to other open source projects for Linux, as well.
Run Lotus Domino on a SuSE Linux box. That's what I've been evaluating for the past month.... about to roll it into production for 250+ Lotus Notes client workstations.
I can understand why Intel would do it. Intel as well as other companies are tiered of getting bullied by Microsoft. You can read documents where Microsoft stoped entire projects that Intel was doing because they threatened to move Windows to a different architecture. If Microsoft one day had less of a market share, and people where running many different operating system, Intel would have more freedom, and so would everyone else.
How does a company like this have such a high cash burn rate when they are essentially just
enhancing free software?
Well SuSE has employees (not volunteers) that enhance, package, test, market and sell the complete end product; distribution consisting of (mostly) free software. In some cases employees also are the actual developers too. These people don't work for bananas (AFAIK), and you need a few of them. That's where the money goes. In addition SuSE has been sponsoring some outside development efforts, but most likely these are much smaller investments than the actual running costs of the company.
A quick calculation: let's say an average employee earns 50000$ a year. In Germany additional costs for employees (employee has to pay some soc. sec. costs, insurances etc) might bem say, 50%.
There are other indirect 'per employee' costs; PCs, facilities etc., so let's say each employee costs 100k$ a year (may be higher, but not much lower). So, for 1M$ you get 100 SuSE employees for one year. I'm not sure how many people SuSE employs; with 1000 employees 45 millions would be enough for 4 and 1/2 years. But that would be just for paying for people; there are other operational costs. So, even though it looks like buckets of money, it's not all that huge for medium-sized company?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Intel is investing in Linux, because Intel is trying to do something against Sun. Isn't that obvious?
The tactics is partly the same as Microsoft's: from desktop to the data center. Since Linux can be used (without most of the ease-of-use issues) on desktops by people who will be admins on the big systems, Intel is trying to bind them to Intel's technology. With the hope that they'll be completely ignorant about anything that doesn't run on Intel's processors.
Investing in SuSE makes further sense because SuSE is very much trying to create a distribution which does not look like Unix.
These corporations would do something like this. The smart move would be to provide a grant to OpenBSD and let the chips fall as they will. Just my opinion. Flamebait.com
This isn't the first time Intel has poored money into Linux. As I recall they put money into Red Hat about a year and a half ago. My memory is telling me it was around $150 million, but I don't always trust my memory...
Also, as I recall, SuSE was helping Intel port Linux to IA-64, so they already had a pretty solid working relationship.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I figure if IBM is trying to keep alive a distribution that includes a Lotus app, why not support a more stable company that can do the same thing? It's not like Red Hat or Caldera can't include the same IBM or Lotus app in their distribution. In fact, I've personally seen IBM's enterprise software running on Red Hat and Caldera. One less software distribution won't make a difference.
Well I'm glad SuSE got pulled out. I've never actually used it myself, but I've seen them doing good things. Despite what most people say, I think it's important that there be more than one major distro. Do you need a distro? Not really, but these are companies that not only work on Linux itself, but work on figuring out how to make installing Linux easier - and from my experience that's sometimes the hardest part. I've been using RedHat for a while (and a couple versions) and I have yet to have an install come off clean the first time without some stupid problem cropping up. On the other hand a friend of mine has been using SuSE for a while and has never had a problem. Maybe it's just luck, or maybe I'm doing something wrong... or maybe it's time I switched.
I like the lizard logo too
Probably because of SuSE's dedication to s390.
Probably because SuSE resells IBM stuff pre-packaged and integrated.
Probably because SuSE tries to cover every little detail for major software like DB2 and Notes.
Probably because SuSE pushes big-iron solutions for banks and the like, which just happens to be IBM's focus as well.
Why SuSE, indeed.
who?
every software company I know, even the game companies, charge for service. name me ONE company who doesn't charge for service. I'll disprove it by trying to call them up. If they're multimillion, they charge for service. If they don't charge for service, they are a lousy company that is out the door. Case closed. Just name me one. I dare ya.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Caldera is on its last legs and from checking out the CALD stock chart it looks like they'll soon be facing NASDAQ delistment. They've been trading below a dollar for a while and are under $35 million market capitalization.
One wonders which of the Linux companies will be left in a year that isn't IBM?
And it nothing much to do with SuSE getting this investment.
Written by Charles Homs, a senior analyst at Forrester Research in Amsterdam:
"People were looking at potential alternatives: 'What happens if Microsoft splits up? Maybe there's new hope for Linux.' Now that we know that's not going to happen, or at least extremely unlikely, that means less interest in Linux,".
How does he know? This judge is a consumer orientated judge who may in fact be a lot harder on Microsoft than Jackson was. I don't agree with a breakup, but maybe for MS they might get something a lot worse.
Analysts....
StarTux
One of the points of splintering the rc scripts from bsd to sysv is so that apps won't step on other apps's toes when placing themselves in the startup sequence. No need to use sed, etc., to edit rc.local or rely on a sysadmin to put it in to get a daemon to run at startup.
By placing all the config information in rc.config, SuSE went back to the bad old days, requiring the hack of fillup(8) to allow apps to edit rc.config. Since 7.1 (at least), SuSE has realized their folly and now have splintered rc.config into a bunch of config files in /etc/rc.config.d/. For example, all the sendmail config information is now in /etc/rc.config.d/sendmail.cf.
However, there will always be a tension between putting config info in one big file and putting it in separate files. What if a setting is needed by more than one app? SuSE seems to be trying to get a good balance, at least.
Suse is the only distro that will support
1) IBM Products
2) Oracle Products
3) Commercial Software.
Suse knows linux is an operating system. Suse is very stable yet ahead of the game compared to US based distros.
If i use Suse linux i can replace expensive NT and Solaris servers running Oracle 9iAS and Databases. Redhat, many times over has told me to buy there 2,500.00 Redhat for Oracle (which is 6.0 based and pretty crappy) and do all sorts of hacks to get any recent rdbms working.
On the other hand, sude made sure that 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2 works with these commercials apps because that is where they get the demand for the OS.
Believe me, free software doesn't demand anything, but business requirments do. Redhat database doesn't cut it for anything other then a website and frankly, its very microsoft of Redhat to try and produce everything under the sun for there os.
So yeah, under suse you can run Domino, DB2, Oracle 9ias, Oracle 9i, Oracle8, oracle forms and reports, oracle forms developer and all the crap every other distro supports.
And usually people pay for OS support when business software relies on it.
It's interesting that you point out SuSE was "in trouble" for the CEO leaving - 2 days before this announcement was made. My brother manages a tech fund, and he has stated that a common thing he (and others managing such investments) expects is the ability to shake out management as a contigency to investing (also like requesting a board seat or three). My bet is the CEO's leaving was directly tied to SuSE getting $$$.
But then again, maybe not...
SuSE releases a copmletely new Distribution every 3 Months! And in very high quality too. Solid box, a stack of Manuals, etc. No wonder they've run outta money. It's very irritating to just decide to buy that new distro that's in the shops right now and see a new one coming up 4 weeks later.
They should cut down on that and rely on their new YOU (Yast online Update - very cool) from now on.
From what I can tell SuSE is the best Distro around. Their Package is impressive, it comes as 7 CDs and an all-in-one DVD and has the best documentation you've ever seen with a distro. If they put more work and testing into each they could very well get around with a release twice a year.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
SuSE near insolvency is just the last of a long list of companies. Sofar, nobody made the money out of Linux to fund its development. Even IBM is acting just because they abuse Linux to lure people to their AIX/RS6000 proprietary platform.
It seems the open source idea of "giving away" stuff might turn out to be Linux' doom.
Try as I mgiht I can't seem to like it. Stupid stupid stupid
"SuSE also made news today when it was learned that Dirk Hohndel, SuSE ex-CTO, will head IBM's new Linux Technology division, located in Rotterdam."
--
I like to watch.
Lotus Domino is the original Exchange Killer. Actually, its been around way longer than Exchange, it works, and its available for Linux.
$100k / $1M = -10- employees, not 100.
So, assuming your estimate of 1000 employees (which I think is high), that gives them enough cash to pay their employees for 5.4 months, not 4.5 years.
At the LWCE I picked up a LinuxPPC dated December 2000. So that's about 9 months since an official stable release.
From what I understand, LPPC does not have a current maintainer. BFD. That doesn't mean people aren't using it, or that it won't have a maintainter in the very near future.
Just what makes a distribution "dead"? The fact that they haven't released anything in over two weeks? Two months? Six months? I remember the days when everyone said Slackware was dead because they hadn't released anything in a year. Then boom! Then they said it was dead because Windriver laid them off, then boom!
The viability of a Free Software project is not predicated upon the sales figures, or the market share, or how many people are using it. I strongly suspect that Yggdrasil is dead, but if they came out with a new release tomorrow, it wouldn't surprise me.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I strongly suspect that Yggdrasil is dead, but if they came out with a new release tomorrow, it wouldn't surprise me.
You can never be too sure with a distro named after a Cthulu Elder God.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
The most important thing is that it's the number 2 distribution, behind RedHat. They keep RedHat on their toes, and vice-versa. A little competition is a Good Thing. Besides, you've got to love a distribution that urges you to "Have a lot of fun..."
SuSE "aims at FHS conformity" and is actively participating in the LSB project.
So they are getting there...
bla
I have actually paid for three different copies myself (6.1, 6.3, 7.1) and felt like I got a good deal just due to the convenience of getting all the cdroms and books.
Once they have their bots on the board, Suse will find some reason to give up working on that port.
At this point, one possible scenario (which I'd quite like to see happen) is that they leave the hassle of packaging the base system software to the community, merging in a common base distro (I'd like to say Debian, but probably it will be rpm-based), with common packages for all base software.
Then, maybe not.
Ciao
----
FB
"Hmmh, what does the currency exchange rate of Euro have to do with SuSE, esp. since they are not selling to US of A? If they did, it would be goog for them; same dollar price would get more euros etc., but...?"
unmm, because they are selling to Europeans so they get Euros. Then they see how many dollars that actually got them............if they just charge equivalent to their standard US prices or whatever then perhaps that just too expensive in Europe.
With most of the tech sector off where did Intel come up with the $15 million or so to invest in SuSE? They aren't short of cash obviously. Earnings appear to be solid (after a search at yahoo to find related stories). Why?
According to AMD the reason Intel is "booming" is that they have "spoiled megahertz as a measure of processor performance." Read It Here
So Essentially using some "bad marketing techniques" (according to AMD) Intel has developed enough profit to invest in a Linux company. This combined with the earlier story about how AMD is dropping the MHGz rating on their chips is a little ironic. Who should we really be rooting for here? In the corporate world it's always hard to tell. I haven't heard of AMD stuffing money down linux people's throats. Do you guys know if they have? I guess I'm sounding a little pro Intel here - and I'm not trying to be - but I think it's cool that a company the size of Intel sees the business value in a Linux company. I get excited about IBM too. Just as long as they don't take it away from the people who built it.
So go SuSE! And use that $45.5 million to do something extra cool!
By the way. Is it really a bad marketing technique if it works to generate profit? Wouldn't a bad marketing technique produce failure? Would you say AOL uses bad marketing techniques? Sorry. Pet peeve use of that over used phrase. Had to ask some rehtorical questions.
I installed and ran SuSE way back (5.x). It was cool because it was a big distro, and pioneered a few usability enhancements.
;-) Debian is the only non-commercial distributionn (arguably volunteers make the most dedicated workers).
Today though, I don't see what sets them out as unique. For example, Mandrake is different because they have LOTS of usability enhancements (like SuSE used to, but more so). Red Hat is, well, Red Hat.
But SuSE?
Of course, none of this matters if the Linux Standards Base gets adopted by ALL the distros (ahem.. RH.. cough)
-Scott
This is an email exchange between me and a SuSE Rep. I was blatantly asking for marketing drivel to try and steer my PHB in the right direction. Our bussiness focus is not on databases, so we were just looking to fill a customer requirement.
;)
It seems to me that they did a very poor sales job, when you stack them up against Dell, Sun and Compaq.
The Sun reps called me repeatedly, the Dell Reps are stilling calling me, and I had to get a restraining order against the Compaq people
I understand that they would be pushing the hardware, but I was more looking for a total turnkey solution (setup, installation, and support), and we were willing to pay for it.
I was really intrigued about SuSE not having an answer to "Why Linux", I thought that this would be the major question that PHB's asked.
> Hello
Sorry for LATE response, I had forgotten to redirect the mails before I
went on vacation.
> I am tasked with doing a cost analysis (Hardware and Software) of
> installing Oracle into a customers site. At present I haven't been
> limited by OS, so Windows(NT or 2000), Linux, or UNIX (any supported
> flavour) are all in the running. I use SuSE at home, and enjoy
> it, but I need to make a strong business case to use it in a customer
> site.
>
> Do you have any of the following;
>
> 1. White papers leveraging SuSE against Windows or HP/SUN
No. We rarely have to justify "why Linux", our customers almost always
already know they want Linux, so their was little need for such
documents.
> 2. Cost outlines for support.
You can get a quote for support from bsupport@suse.com, or see below for
the other option.
> 3. Do you offer Oracle turnkey solutions
No. We don't believe this would make sense to do this ourselves.
Instead, we have partnered with Compaq. See
http://www.suse.com/en/support/oracle/ for a link to Compaq's "Certified
Configuration" for Oracle 9i. The model we use: Compaq sells and
supports (1st and 2nd level) such solutions, and we work with Compaq in
the background to develop them and provide them with 3rd level support.
In the future we'll also add other hardware vendors, but since we have
to start somewhere and because Compaq is by far the most important
Oracle partner for Linux they're the first ones (and will always have a
head-start).
> 3. Any useful links that I can use to better showcase Linux would be
> appreciated
>
> It has to be reliable, and be on Oracle 8.1.6(7), The size of the
> database would be around 50 GB, and have less than 50 concurrent
> users.
Yes, that's a typical Linux scenario and even on the low end. If you
need user experiences I'd suggest to ask on suse-oracle@suse.com, a very
active list. What they'll have to say is worth more than our or Oracle's
marketing talk I guess... subscription info is available under the URL I
already mentioned.
There are two Linux distros that run on IBM mainframes. One of them is SuSE the other is TurboLinux. Everything else is still in development and not officially sanctioned. IBM props up SuSE if no other reason, that one. For $45 million dollars they protect their investment in being able to run thousands of Linux images profitably in the CoLo business.
Non-service oriented companies often charge for service because it is so costly. As I read, in the past at MS, callcenter costs were charged against the division that released the project. So, the more bugs in a project, the more it kills the revenue. At some point, you must charge for these things. People are expensive, and that's why there's so much work on intelligent help systems to answer your questions.
We're talking about chicken vs. egg. You think people charge for service because of its moneymaking possibilities. But many companies are forced to provide service as a consequence of their business, and they end up needing to charge for it. In reality, both happen, with some overlap.
...given that I recently read an interview (dead tree) with the big Kahuna at Suse and he was going on about how they were doing so well since the German market (being substantially different from the American market) had embraced their distro.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Well, SuSE is a german company... So I'd guess fluctuations of euro are irrelevant in their "home" market, and don't have much need to exchange those to dollars?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I almost hate to admit it, but I used to work for a certain company that had 98 in its product line. I used to take about 17 calls per day. 35 bucks a call. 98 used to lose money, it's true. but after outsourcing the product, they started to make money in millions, just for support. A profit.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
However, this only emphasizes my point; the amount SuSE gets is not all that big. It'd then be more like 450 employees for one year.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes