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IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux
dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."
Or, perhaps it's payback time. Novell were very supportive of IBM in the SCO debacle. Perhaps this is IBM saying thankyou. Wouldn't it be ironic if SCO's actions were what caused Linux to become an even stronger corporate presence
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
First they lost appreciation from personal users (Fedora affair), and now they lose support from big guys (IBM). I'd sell my Red Hat stock as soon as I could pick up the phone and contact my broker...
---
All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
HP and Novell are putting SUSE on it's desktops and laptops.
> Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,'
This would explain why we have been running SuSE on our mainframes for the last two years then.
IBM has had marketing agreements with Red Hat, SuSE and and TurboLinux for quite some time. It may favour Red Hat in the States, but it seems quite agnostic about which distribution to recommend to customers.
I'm not in IT either, but aren't they at the forefront of that whole 'don't buy the hardware, buy the service' movement that has been taking off in recent years?
You must have been out of the IT world for quite a while. IBM sells:
- intel servers (running linux or windows)
- AMD opteron servers (SUSE has an AMD64 port)
- power processor boxes (running AIX and linux)
A press release from 2000: SuSE delivers Enterprise Linux for IBM RS/6000
I've had a few dealings with IBM regarding Linux in the past few years, and they've historically been pretty agnostic distribution-wise, with some slant towards SuSE on the mainframe, and Red Hat on the x86 platform (but I've heard friends of mine say that IBM pushed SuSE very aggressively on the x86 platform too).
Remember that the first industrial-strenght implementation of a Linux system on the mainframe has been a joint effor by SySE and IBM.
SuSE was the frist version that I knew of that ran on *ALL* IBM platforms.
zSeries (Main Frame)
pSeries (AIX PPC)
iSeries (AS/400 PPC)
xSeries (Intel/AMD and soon PPC)
IBM also played with TurboLinix.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as I know SuSE have one of the two best PPC linux distros out there, the other one being Yellow Dog.
/. Where the truth
They are THE major player in the very large server market, however they are still a formitable competitor in the medium-sized to Pentium-class server market.
And for good reason. IBM packages their servers with a LOT of goodies. IBM Director (formerly known as Tivoli) comes free with every server. And now we're getting SuSE.
This isn't the first time IBM gives SUSE a hand.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Yes, IBM is huge. They retooled as a consulting company so they deliver "solutions" more than hardware, and that is why they've been big on Linux. Basically, there are a ton of little Linux consultants out there but for top-tier corporations you would only hire a company of large standing. IBM is really the only player in this type of (growing) Linux market (although Sun is moving in that direction, but my boss thinks that Big Blue will want to buy them out.)
IMO, IBM could be thinking about buying Novell. A move like this helps them suss that out, but the acquisition of their own Linux distribution combined with a surprisingly large Netware install base is pretty attractive. Especially since just about all of the Netware sites are looking to move out of it there's a real opportunity for IBM to come in and make that happen on Linux before they go Microsoft.
* Please do not read my signature.
SuSE even runs on mainframes .
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
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IBM continues to produce Wintel PCs, and I believe at least a portion of our Linux offerings also run on Intel architecture, but there has been a PowerPC version of Linux for at least the past 7 years. I'm not certain what SuSE is running on, but I think it could be PowerPC.
IBM has been far from a "Red Hat shop" in the past. SuSE has had -- until the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 -- better mainframe support, and SuSE's Enterprise distros for the Power architecture (pSeries & iSeries) has also been better.
/. anyway; why clutter a good post up with verifiable facts). IBM has also had a relationship with Red Hat (Hardware Management Consoles for the partitionable pSeries boxes use a customized RH distro), so it's not like they've been *only* SuSE.
You've been able to get SuSE Enterprise for Power with your pSeries box for a while now (sorry, no time to look up specifics, and this is
Remember, at one time, in the not-to-distant past, IBM was a "partner" with 4 different Linux distributors: Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and (gasp) Caldera. So, you might as well say IBM's been a "SCO shop" for a while, too.....
So. . . this should surprise no-one. IBM is omnipresent in Linux these days, but they have traditionally been the biggest force behind Suse (and now they are backing Novell).
My Guess As to Why? There are things that IBM can do hiding behind the names "Suse" and "Novell" that they cannot do as "IBM".
I don't think that one can describe IBM as purely a "Red Hat shop"; they've had offerings with SuSE in the past. But I'd say their primary motivation is probably just to keep their options open w/r/t OS suppliers. (And, of course, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Novell is sticking it to SCO, and is a plausible annoyance to Microsoft.)
I mean, look how well things turned out for them the last time they had a single supplier.
I think this is a great move. I moved to SuSE before for a while before I went to gentoo (simply because it's easier to update) and the SuSE people just do things well. It's like those German cars. When I first sat in a BMW and saw that the rear-view mirrors adjusted automatically when reversing or the window-wipers altered the length of their pause depending on your speed I thought "Nice job guys. Well done."
I get the same feeling when using SuSE - nice things you never even thought of.
Out of the IT World? More like off of the planet!
IBM is the #3 server vendor in the world behind HP and Dell. They have about 15% market share. IBM has been investing billions into Linux and the types of servers that would support it best (notably blade servers -- perfect for grids).
In December 2000 IBM committed to invest $1Billion in Linux software, hardware, services, the open source community and partnerships during 2001. That's only 2001! If anything, they have only increase their rate of investment.
Add to all of this their strong commitment to WebSphere and Java, and you have a company that has more than embraced Linux. When IBM invested 2.5 Billion in a new semiconductor manufacturing facility,they automated the facility using Linux.
Come back to our world where Big Blue is bigger & bluer than ever!
Anyone think this wasn't a message to Bill Gates?
IBM is a company, and a company sells what its customers want. If 6% of IBM's customer base wanted to use dr-dos, im sure IBM would find a means to deliver it. Thats all, theres nothing more to see here. ;). Both home and personal versions on 8.2 and 9.
Suse, for those that havent used it, is a fantastic distro btw... it was the first one to convince me to buy a boxed copy
Also, suse sells 3 foot inflatible penguins on their website, i paid 25 bucks for mine, and TRUST ME... it impresses the ladies.
-- Caldera started by disgruntled Novell employees
--MS finances Caldera/SCO to sue IBM
--IBM induces Novell to register UNIX copyrights (after waiting 10 years to get around to it).
--Novell Buys SuSe
--SCO sues Novell
--Now IBM pours money into Novell
I know Novell is a company with a glorious past, but, just as SCO is a MS puppet/proxy, I think Novell is getting pulled into being a minor sattelite orbiting IBM.
Man, this is better than a soap opera !
Harbinger of things to come is the latest phrase from the department of redundancy department.
A harbinger describes things to come, so this phrase is equal to "A fortelling of things to come of things to come". Not only that, but Merriam-Webster (my online dictionary of choice, since dictionary.com implemented annoying popups and banners that give people siezures) lists 2b (n. one that foreshadows what is to come) as a precursor to the modern definition (one that pioneers or initiates a major change). Not that "an initiator of major change to come" makes much more sense, as "initiator of major change" already implies something is to come.
~Will
sig?
They've really turned around the compnay in a really short amount of time. I mean Netware as a product was sort of dying out and they sold most of Unix (or the brooklyn bridge, its hard to tell). I thought they would just fade off into the sunset, or linger like a rotting corpse as a shell of its former glorious self( See Borland). Those executives should get a nobel prize in business. Wait, they don't give a nobel prize for buisness. I guess their huge salaries and bonuses will have to be enough. But, seriously they did a really good job.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Will this really impact anything except perhaps some stock prices? Red Hat have made a pretty risky move by only taking paying customers for their distro (although i appreciate that they have Fedora, it's a shame they basically split their business in two). Maybe you could say they bought the loss on themselves. But putting all the corporate deals and insentives behind, is this really going to affect the adoption of linux in the business and home user world?
Silly rabbit
This is the moment I have been waiting for.
Since the late 90's people have been saying "Linux will be ready for the desktop in a few years". I realised the epoch defining moment would be when the major PC manufacturers started ship Linux on the desktop in a big way.
Folks. This is it. The real battle has just begun.
... of things to come is the great beauty of Linux. You don't have to be tied to "one shop" as this whole industry is so used to doing. You have choice, so you have the potential for competition. IBM is simply being a good consumer. They learned their lessons from the past (when they were dependent upon Microsoft). Makes perfect buiness sense.
Linux will be a business where lots of people get to eat, but no one will get filthy rich -- and that isn't a bad thing.
Has to be said, how long until IBM buys out Novell? They haven't exactly done too well these last few years, and Novell has a whole host of patents and IP that would fit in niceley with IBM. Not only that, but if this farce with SCO doesn't get dismissed soon, they would then be the direct owners of those Unix remnants that Novell holds onto.
Novell is moving more and more into Linux, and there next version of Netware is to be Linux based, with no more stand alone netware products they just announced. Novell was once king, as was IBM in it's heydey. Between them they could well become king again.
Let me start by saying that this is not a troll, just an honest question.
Could someone please explain why one would drop all that money on an iSeries or zSeries just to run linux on it, rather than saving money by getting an x86 machine? If I'm buying an iSeries, it's because I want to run OS/400. Don't get me wrong, I think it's rather cool that it's even possible, but is it really necessary?
If you look into the past you can predict future. IBM is not stupid. They do not want to create another Microsoft. They are going to play on two horses, one being RedHat and the other SuSe/Novell. This makes room for IBM to make A LOT of money by selling hardware. Do not worry in five years, there will still be RedHat and SuSe - both having around 30% of the market. IBM will make it so.
Interestingly, from SuSe's FAQ:
Will there be a PPC edition of SUSE Linux 9.0?
Answer: no.
Although Suse once had a PPC port, it is clearly stagnant; this investment from IBM very likely means that it'll be revived, but that'll take a least some doing. Yellow Dog Linux remains the best choice to run Linux on your Mac, apparently, even the one with an IBM processor.
--
$tar -xvf
Server shmerver, when do I get to buy it on a Thinkpad?
The same thing happened with OS/2. Great OS, but the company would make you yank your own teeth out with rusty pliers before the would send it to you. Instead they would shove their own competition down your throte (that' "other" OS).
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Corporate customers love that warm feeling of having someone's ass at the other end of a FIXME button detonated.
Although you'd think that IBM would be more of a Red Hat supporter (would they really want support two distributions?), I think this investment probably started after the SCO fiasco launched and Novell and IBM were forced by need, to cooperate together. Novell is throwing in with Linux like IBM did a few years ago and it doesn't take make much sense to restrict the number of people working on Linux to just your own.
It's also a nice way of saying "$86M to SCO? Ok, $50M to Novell, asshats." Gorilla chess.
NOVELL has decided to go with KDE as desktop rather than GNOME.
Read more here. This is a direct quote from Novells Chris Stone.
Yesterday I went to CeBIT and the SuSE booth was in hall 1 right under Novell. (They pay extra to be in hall 1) Red Hat was stuck in the back of a hall and almost didn't notice them, they were just behind Iran's massive booth (Countries have booths to get people to invest in them)
n sects. JPG
Also Check out this image from a fourune cookie that SuSE was passing out:
http://www.kruczkowski.com/images/cebit04/i
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
SCO will get big mileage out of this in the public arena, claiming that Novell and IBM are conspiring to block its legal claims. SCO will also try a new legal attack against both companies, claiming they are conspiring against it to defuse SCO's legal arguments while economically benefitting from what SCO views as their contract- and IP-infringing activities.
Thoughts?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Just if IBM releases Lotus Office as Open Source, M$ will fall deep.
It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Red Hat is dying. Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Red Hat community when recently IDC confirmed that Red Hat accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Red Hat has lost more market share, news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Red Hat is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Red Hat's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Red Hat faces a bleak future.
In fact there won't be any future at all for RH because Red Hat is dying. Things are looking very bad for Red Hat. As many of us are already aware,
RH continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
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...one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come.
No need to inject false drama here. Things have come. No wondering required. Next story please.
You may have heard Redhat called the Microsoft of Linux. This is a perception that is alive and well within IBM.
When I worked on the Linux Standards Base project, Redhat was very resistant to standardization. We'd open bug reports about LSB compliance issues, and they'd be hastily closed saying that Redhat wanted to do things their way. They ended up not participating in the UnitedLinux project, which was backed heavily by IBM and HP.
SuSE on the other hand was very involved with the LSB and UnitedLinux. They drove a bulk of the standardization efforts. They also have a very good support relationship with the IBM Linux developers.
So when it comes down to it, SuSE just wants IBM more than RH. They created a better working relationship. The only thing they really lacked was a strong North American presence. The merger with Novell solved that, and gave them a strong support and services arm to boot.
Ok, can you show me some literature to back this statement up? I work in a Netware shop and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Yes, ANYTHING. It handles file and print services so well that it's just not worth it to move to anything else, IMO of course. But, despite its massive upside, I keep hearing that people are "thinking of abandoning it" or "gonna move away from it." WHY?! It's the best thing out there for what it does! So, please, if someone can document this apparent exodus please do so, because apart from people tossing around vague comments I haven't seen it.
TY
Not really fair to mod the parent as redundant, given the number of interesting and insightful replies to it. Should at least be considered a bit 'interesting'.
According to http://rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=6115
Yes it does exist, and has existed for quite some time.
Yes it is based on code from another popular distribution in the wild.
I have it and have used the last 3 releases. Latest release is still in beta but they basically have taken the "unnamed distro" and layered on IBM software and customizations.
Latest version is beautiful, and lightyears ahead of the last release that is about 1yr old by now.
Customizations such as on first-time boot, it will detect your windows partitions, search out you Bookmarks, My Documents, and Lotus Notes ids and migrate them over to your linux install.
very slick...new customized splash screens desktops, openoffice templates, etc.
and yes i said Lotus Notes 6.5 running under linux with a customized version of wine. (based on opensource code from codeweavers i believe)..
Just taking a sec to put rumours to rest, no screenshots, as its an internal product under development and we all tend to like to keep out little secrets to ourselves. Sorry.
But yes Blue Linux is alive and well.
www.bluelinux.org : no route to host
bluelinux.sf.net: Rebellious fingers owned u
No, No, NO!
How many times must I say this to people
It's not a finger, it's the finger!
--This message brought to you by the society for the encouragement of correctly used insults, gestures, and otherwiuse rude behaviour.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Red Hat will very likely lose it's #1 spot as far as sales in the commercial linux distro market(if they are even still #1). First, Red Hat hasn't exactly been friendly to the Linux community. They write kernel patches all the time for Red Hat and don't submit them to kernel.org That doesn't seem like very friendly community behavior to me.
#2) Their support contracts are outrageous. I've talked with people who work at various Universites and from what they've told me, Red Hat wouldn't give them any sort of discount as far support. The contract was so expensive there was no way they could buy it. Novell is the support contract and certification kings. Which brings me to point
#3) RHCE is worthless. OTOH, Novell is recommending LPIC alongside their own linux cert. LPIC attempts to be distribution neutral (except for package managers). RHCE is strictly Red Hat.
Novell is attempting to make Suse more open (with recent moves of open sourcing Yast and a lot of Novell software), while Red Hat is going the other direction. Red Hat has historically used a lot of software still considered beta and has been the buggiest linux distro out there.
It's Red Hat's own fault really. They have done very little in the past few years to keep customers. While Novell is doing A LOT for the community. They are going to not only snatch up Windows/Netware converts, but disgruntled Red Hat supports as well.
A big part of why you're seeing articles about Novell/IBM now relates to the new Linux for POS offering from IBM/Suse (article here and IBM website here).
IBM and Suse, as it's been noted repeatedly, have been partners for some time. SUSE has a much deeper market penetration in Europe than Red Hat, something we don't notice here in the states as easily.
Keep in mind IBM is not a distributor of linux, just a proponent.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
The biggest problem I've had over the past few months with Redhat is this:
Heaps of apps targeted and marketed towards the Redhat "platform".
Redhat has dropped support for old products... this means no security updates, which upsets corporate IT departments and PHBs. They all say "thou shall upgrade to a supported version"
However, the RH 8 platform is only two years old and unsupported.
Now if your apps are "supported only under Redhat 8", but your servers "must upgrade to a supported version", short of tedious technical assessments, Redhat has effectively killed the products you're using.
PHB's say "I knew we shouldn't have trusted this Linux crap! Now our apps are unsupported!"
Now... does the application developer target RH AS? Which has already crept to 2.1, or do they consider SuSE, Debian, or ditch Linux altogether?
I'm certain IBM has encountered this problem. There are apps on the IBM website which used to show Linux support for Redhat 8 and under, but now that RH8 is unsupported, the apps show no support for Linux at all.
IBM, a company which still provides support for OS/2, and will probably service your ball typewriter if you paid them enough, has to tell its customers "our supplier has dropped support."
Will IBM stick with Redhat?
Something is going to blow very, very soon. Redhat would be wise to offer support for prior versions... and NOW, and drop the BS version creep.
Their stellar stock performance over the past few months has come at the price of customer loyalty.
Robert Love works for Ximian. I just finished reading his blog; his 'Project Utopia' was still stuck in my brain.
Is this rock and roll, or a form of state control?
We wanted to license SuSE for a 16 processor machine. A commercial license for SuSE was $4000 (4x 4proc $1000 license), EDU license was much cheaper, $400. It took 2 weeks to PO a SuSE vendor who supported EDU pricing.
After installing the system with SuSE and running their update utility, the new kernel installed by the utility doesn't boot, even after contacting SuSE enterprise support, they had no answer, except to boot the old vulnerable kernel.
RedHat EL was $50, and we downloaded ISO's the same day we paid.
We arn't running SuSE anymore.
IBM was deliberately breaking the law by selling equipment and support services to Hitler. So were many American companies, including the Bush family, for that matter. The people at the top knew what was going on, but they saw the dollar signs and shipped the goods anyway.
I'm surprised at the shock response this post is getting! Truth often hurts, but fighting it is futile and only makes one a champion of ignorance.
If I'm mistaken in my data, then certainly let me know! Otherwise people, quite griping.
-FL
I've always hated the fickle part of the Linux community. The kind that always rooted for Red Hat to Fall even though they've given away the code to everything they've ever produced. Even back in the mid 90's you had these jackass's calling Red Hat the "Microsoft" of Linux soley because they were the most popular.
Now along comes Novell/Suse. Suse of course has specialized in proprietary restrictive distros. Only just recently has Yast been gpl'd. Novell of course has specialized in proprietary software for like 20 years. These are the company's that you want to lead Linux and OSS for the next 10 years? Let me tell you. Novell may finally allow ISO's of some low end form of Suse to be released but their main goal is combining their proprietary technologies with Suse. So now you'll see a Suse with a GPL Yast but proprietary NDS,Groupwise, Zenworks, Ximian connector etc. Novell btw also doesn't have the best track record for acquisitions and business management for the last 10 years. In fact they have a downright shitty track record. This is the mega-company that you want to "lead" linux for the next 10 years?
Good luck. Oh and Redhate sucks.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It gets old. You talk about email clients, and someone will insist that you can get by with a plain text mailer -- MIME attachments are passing fad. You talk about off-the-shelf routers, and somebody will wonder why you don't just use an old laptop running BSD. You discuss the problems of providing reliable downloads, and someone will insist that BitTorrent, a tool you need to be a total hacker to use, is a universal solution.
And of course there's the dude who asks, "I have no trouble working with Fedora, why is it a problem for IBM?" Of course it doesn't even occur to him that Red Hat gets the same amount of revenue for Fedora as they get for SuSE. Which is to say, none.
Repeat after me: "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS FROM ME."
historically IBM has always been a Red Hat shop
Nonsense. IBM has always, when they've shipped Linux, shipped RedHat on some platforms (mostly x86-based, started to move to POWER) and SUSE on others (S/390 and zSeries, maybe some x86. SUSE used to have a PPC distro too).
I can imagine that one reason for this policy is that IBM learned with Microsoft the danger of handing an OS business to just one company.
-- Alastair
I wonder what you do for a living. Do you write bad software and then call people idiots when they can't figure it out?
As for your girlfriend -- but no, given your expressed attitude towards people in general and women in particular, it makes more sense for you to handle sexual issues single-handedly. Forgive the pun!