Dell Calls For Red Hat To Lower Prices

VaultX points to an article on CNET (linked below), writing "According to Dell, Red Hat needs to lower pricing. 'We believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, for the small and medium-sized business market, was out of the price range of these customers.' With Dell's strong presence in the Linux server market, Red Hat may want to listen."

Comments

Other Linux competitors

[Devil's BSD]

Couldn't/Shouldn't Dell look into other Linux server packages? After all, that is the nature of the free market. If Dell drags Red Hat and, say, Turbolinux, or god forbid... SCO... into the fray, that would make the bottom line for companies looking to switch to Linux even more appealing.

Re:Other Linux competitors

[0racle]

No other distro is going after their business. You think Sun or MS cares that I run ArchLinux and Slackware? Or that the guy down the street runs Debian and maybe some other guy runs Mandrake? Suse is in a state of transition right now, NDS is too new, no one takes Lin-whatever-the-hell-they're called seriously and everything else falls into the realm of a hobby OS. None of those are the business that Sun or MS are targeting. If Red Hat was not in the position it is now, neither would be going after any distro since for them they would effectively not exist. Red Hat is the target not because they are moving Linux, but because they are successfully moving a product into areas that both Sun and MS want. If they were selling DR-DOS as well they would be the target. Red Hat the brand is the target, not the software.

It'll Happen

[Refrozen]

I imagine it'll happen. I have a feeling RH gets most of their sales from Dell, it's the ole'Walmart syndrome, where they either lower their prices, and go out of business, or go out of business because they lose their main client.

Damned big companies.

Agree

[mjmartin_uk]

I completely agree with Dell's views on RHEL's overpricing. I bought a Dell PowerEdge server for a small business back in August but Red Hat's Enterprise Linux was overpriced and we felt uncomfortable buying a subscription at the rates we were offered from Dell. Instead I recommend we choose Suse's offereing which was a far more viable option for the company. I can see why Dell went for Novell a month or two back. Let's not beat about the bush though, it could be construed that Dell spoke to Novell so they are now in a better bargainig position with Red Hat.

same old story

[davejenkins]

disclaimer 1: i used to work for Red Hat
disclaimer 2: I have done contract work for Dell

Dell always will badger vendors to shave prices wherever/whenever/however possible. Every dollar they can save somewhere equals X% increase in marketshare or volume for them. Dell is a ruthless selling machine.

Up until recently, Dell really didn't care so much about Linux for the SMB market, only in the way that their customers wanted it (and it gave them an option). I would imagine that:
1. Dell has done the math, realized that SuSE isn't penetrating the way they had hoped
2. without serious competition (which was supposed to exert price pressure on RH) Dell has resorted to publicly whining about RH prices
3. This public whining is supposed to snowball and "force" RH into reducing prices.

The problem is that the SMB market is actually more resource-intense in terms of support. As such, Red Hat has never really liked it (compared to Enterprise), but Dell's volume volume volume absoultely depends on it.

If Dell agrees to shoulder more of the support burden, I would imagine they could get very good deals with RH.

Re:They could be lower but not by much

[Synn]

Windows Server 2003 Web Edition is $399. Per year that's $79.80 for 5 years or $39.90 for 10 years.

Except that those prices don't include any support contracts. If you call Microsoft with a problem you'd better have a credit card ready.

I can download Fedora Core for free and get free updates if I wanted to go the cheap route.

Re:Don't Write Home About RH Support

[killjoe]

Welcome to the enterprise my friend.

The purpose of enterprise support is not to fix your problem it's to convince your CIO to buy the product. It's to make sure the "is supported" box is checked off.

I have had the exact same or worse story from every majow vendor in the IT world. MS, Netapp, HP, Veritas, Dell and Apple. Call them up and all of a sudden you find out you paid for nothing. They all find an excuse not to help you. I even had a netapp guy say "don't call us anymore" despite the fact that our company had paid for top level support.

My experience is that the only people who support you are small local vendors. They will camp out at your place if they have to. Enterprise vendors just take your money and laugh.