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Novell/SUSE Prime for Aquisition?
Ho Kooshy Fly writes "Supposedly Novell/SUSE looks like a good buyout target now. The likes of the obvious, IBM and the less obvious Cisco might be interested in integrating in the new Novell/SUSE company into their portfolio." Lucent, AT&T, and HP are also mentioned as possible buyers, but it's important to remember that it's all still just speculation.
I don't see why IBM would want the combination of them. SuSE by itself I can see, but why would IBM be more interested with Novell as part of the deal? IBM has Notes, so it doesn't need GroupWise.
--Ben
Suddenly, they'd hold all of Novell's rights vs. SCO. Since they sold SCO those rights to begin with, SCO could quickly wind up in a pickle... :]
Especially since Novell has those rights to direct SCO to do whatever it wants with respect to the contract between SCO & IBM.
In other words, IBM buying Novell would draw the noose more tightly around SCO's neck (okay, true, that's overkill, but...)
That might be news to the MVS, OS/400, and other OS teams that IBM pays each month.
Of the companies mentioned, IBM seems the only one likely to be able to do something with Novell/SuSE. But do they really need them? They've got plenty on their own and 1 merger is risky enough, merging with a recent merger (actually 2) would be pretty risky and likely to fail. Of the other companies mentioned, Cisco would be asking for trouble, stick to Network hardware, it's what made you rich and the others just don't need the trouble. I was excited to see Novell eat up Ximian and SuSE, I believe they'll be succesful, but adding one more company to the mix might be the straw that break the merger's back.
If there was a buy out of Novell, it would definately spell the end of Red Hat. Imagine how strong of a Linux powerhouse IBM or Cisco owning Ximian, Suse, and Novell would be. Both desktop and server would benifit immensely. A little side note: check out these two stock graphs of Novell and Red hat, on the day Suse was aquired. Redhat Novell
Please! IBM and HP buy a Linux company? 'Why buy a cow when milk is free' has been their attitude towards Linux for a while now. Besides, IBM will soon own a small share of Novell anyway--more than sufficient to do them good if there's anything to the stories of Novell having enough Unix IP rights left to protect any Linux with a Novell brand on it from SCO attacks.
As for the others, sorry, I keep an eye on all of them, and I haven't see any sign of any of them having any interest in getting into the OS business. AT&T & Lucent have their own problems to fix, and Cisco is finally coming around quite nicely by having stuck to their main business lines.
Steven
Talk about Paranoia. Novell bought SuSE to strengthen their Linux offering. SuSE went from being an independent software company with a market cap in the $210 million range, to being part of a company with a market cap well above $2 billion.
Redhat is focusing on selling products that will make it money. So Redhat won't make boxed sets of their cheapest product anymore, but who were buying them anyway? You've always been able to get it in tons of books, magazines, on the net etc., and Fedora is taking over the mantle. So what you have is a situation where companies still get support if they pay for it, just as before, and consumers get a ditro, just as before, but the name will be different, and they'll have to go to some cheap CD packager to get CD's of it much like most people have been doing anyway.
Sun? Who cares about Sun except Sun itself?
All in all I see the Novell and Redhat events as good - it will likely help both companies, which will only mean better business penetration for Linux, and that will filter down to consumers eventually.
As IBM wants Linux to take over the world, the need to keep it somewhat at arms length. Big Blue will continue to dance with the penguin, but no one should expect IBM to invite Tux home to bed.
IBM made a point a few years ago of emphasizing that they wanted to be a service company and work with all Linux distributions neutrally, not make their own. If they were to suddenly favor one distro so strongly, it would discard their neutrality, and I think that would hurt their current business model.
Infuriate left and right
If HP wants an OS to invest in they should take a look at OpenVMS. DEC and Compaq almost criminally neglected their VMS customers and yet they STILL sold new licenses.
OpenVMS has unlimited potential, if only its new owner would get past a little bit of "Not Invented Here" mentality and get over their Redmond worship.
I want to use these Mod points but I can't find anything Interesting, Informative or Insightful on Slashdot.
They already have a slightly competent judge. Its probably better for everybody for IBM to fight this out based on the case they already have. We need a legal affirmation of the GPL, for one thing, which is unlikely to come up if IBM has another, better case based on the Novell copyrights. After SCO loses, then IBM can buy Novell.