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."

Comments

My brother in law

[SquadBoy]

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.

Meanwhile at SuSe..

[CaffeineAddict2001]

$45 Million is a truely disturbing ammount. Now is the time on sprockets when we dance.

Debian?

[Webmonger]

Is there a good reason you don't mention debian? It is the choice of Taco et al. . .

Would anyone save Loki?

[Wolfier]

Hm...only 1 or 2 millions would do...IBM, please?

Re:Article does not say a whole lot.

[scotpurl]

1. SuSE is big in Europe (posted above).
2. SuSE actually bundles Lotus Domino server (IBM owns Lotus), if you want it, for Linux. see http://www.suse.com/us/products/index.html
3. It also support DB2, and comes bundled (but RedHat does that, too).
4. Oh, and you can buy an S/390 version.
5. They contributed a lot to various Linux projects, especially Matrox video drivers (but that's my personal bias).

I tried RedHat in the beginning, and then I tried SuSE. I found SuSE to be better, smoother implimentation of Linux, and I found the YAST sysadmin tool to be great at reminding me where to find things (transitioning from OSF/1 and AIX). Plus my hardware was never fully supported in RedHat, but it was in SuSE (which never made sense to me).

Plus, I find it easier to rally behind the bad rendering of a cartoonish gecko than to rally behind a hat. (I mean, if we're talking kewl logos....)

Maybe it would have been better if they died

[Ur@eus]

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.

Re:Maybe it would have been better if they died

[henley]

This is a very partisan approach to the issue. Success for Linux in the market place is not tied to the financial success of it's most well-known distro. It may not even be linked to RedHat's success.

I also believe you have mis-understood the fundamental premise on which one company may choose to support another. Let's take a worked example:

IBM is a global IT provider. And it has a very strong presence in non-US markets. It may surprise you to find that those markets have different requirements to the US. In particular, support for other languages & keyboards is higher on the priority list. And there are Distros that do indeed recognise this and cater for it: SuSE is one (mainly European) and TurboLinux is another (mainly Asia-Pacific).

As a result of this, these Distros are much more popular in their respective geographies than RedHat. MUCH more popular. (and not only for "good" reasons: there's as much senseless product jingoism in the computer biz as there is in any other (e.g. all those pissing-on-ford/chevvy badges one can observe on trucks in the US).

As a result of this effect, Linux's penetration world-wide is increased over and above that which would be observed if there was only One True Distro. And IBM therefore has a bigger global market into which it can sell it's value-add services and products.

It can therefore be observed that this isn't altruism on the part of these companies, it's just plain business sense: support the infrastructure that provides your ability to sell. RedHat is a part of, but by no means all of, that infrastructure, globally, and it behoves us all to remember that.

Re:Lets see

[Arandir]

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)

Re:Stating the obvious

[_Swank]

No, IBM has stated numerous times (sorry, no links) that they don't want an "IBM Linux" of any sort.

However they do have strategic partnerships with 4 different distributions -- Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera. These partnerships basically state that IBM and the distro company will ensure that IBM server software (DB2, Lotus Domino, WebSphere, MQSeries, etc) runs and is packaged properly for these distros. The partnerships have been in place for a year or two at least but were originally chosen to get a very wide coverage throughout the world (RedHat in US, SuSE in Europe, TurboLinux in Asia, and Caldera in Antartica(?)).

Since SuSE and RedHat are probably the main 2 left of the original 4 (yes, TurboLinux and Caldera are still kicking -- some less than others) there is good reason that IBM make sure SuSE stay afloat.

Re:I bet

[Eloquence]

Making money with SuSE would be desirable for IBM, but it is not the reason they have invested in them. It is a strategic investment, with the goal of keeping a good European Linux distribution alive. IBM's business with Linux will be in the system-making, everything from the hardware to the software (proprietary applications on the basis of an open-source OS) to the support. From their perspective, promoting Linux as a platform is much better than promoting Windows since, if Linux takes off, they cannot be forced to accept any Microsoft standards or solutions (especially since Microsoft can basically kill any IBM software solution by bundling it with their OS). On the other hand, should Windows take over the server market, IBM might face a grim future under Microsoft rule. So their engagement for Linux is strategically very clever, and has nothing to do with SuSE in particular, although IBM would obviously not allow certain decisions by SuSE where their own markets are concerned. Expect products that compete with IBM solutions to disappear from the distro.

They saved suse because suse supports them!

[cybrthng]

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.