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Dell Founder Dropped $100M Onto Red Hat
diegocgteleline.es writes "Via google news, I found a article at MSNBC claiming that Michael Dell, Dell's founder and chairman, has droped $100M into Red Hat (Michael himself, not his company). Analyists say that "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat", but one wonders what's behind of this move. A fight against their competence in the server market?"
Once upon a time, Dell had their own SVR4 UNIX Distro. Perhaps Mr Dell has a passion for OS's.
I don't even give Dell a look when considering PC purchases. No AMD cpus.
It's very sad, they have a decent product otherwise.
I doubt it has anything to do with Dell, it's just a personal investment, right right? :)
...but one wonders what's behind of this move.
Couldn't it be that Michael Dell was just donating $100 million out of the goodness in his heart? I mean isn't it POSSIBLE that someone nowadays is just doing something that DOESN'T have an ulterior motive or ISN'T planning on recouping in the future?...... Oh shit, I just read what I actually wrote....nevermind.
Dell - neither the person nor the company
Aha
Maybe he is hoping the stock goes back up to $29 where it was a year ago.... (its at 11 now)
"Competence" = competition
In Spanish, competencia means both, hence this is an easy error for native Spanish speakers to make in English.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Sigh. Editors.
but one wonders what's behind of this move.
With a 100 million investment by an individual (and not a corporation) you can bet that Michael Dell thinks this is a good investment. That kind of money isn't chump change, so he must think it's a good risk.
AccountKiller
Michael Dell is just making sure that he has multiple sources for his supplies. Operating systems is just one component in his systems. Only a veriy foolish CEO would tie himself to single source.
He's also tweaking MSFT. MSFT could come back with lower prices (of course, they could come back with higher prices). Dell has enough muscle to pay the higher Microsoft price if asked to.
If I had Dell's capital I might invest a few bucks in an up-and-coming tech stock like RH. It might prove very useful given that Dell have some interest in the cheepo server market.
I'm not saying this points to some massive change in direction, just a little future proofing, and if it all goes wrong he can afford it.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
if your RTA it sounds like his investment company reviewed the market, found a solid invtestment choice based upon the principals that he specified, and, likely with his approval, invested less than 1% of the money he had with them (not even all of his wealth) in that company.
They're not going to discuss his reasoning but it likely says alot of red hat's market capitalization, nothing more.
"Jedi Business, go back to your drinks"
Even then, Dell might make money on the deal: .
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
The quote had me scratching my head - an analyst said that Dell *IS* interested, but that the "Dell" isn't the company or its' chairman.
Actually at the time MSD procured the shares it made a lot of sense. ES3 was set to turn a massive userbase into a load of paying users. It was everyone's ecpectation that a significant portion of professional non-paying RedHat Linux 9 users would convert their systems to the paying model. At the time the expectation was that RedHat would thus generate a healthy amount of liquidity and that is always good for share prices. The market didn't quite play out that way but that is of course with hindsight. MSD's decision was a rational investment. Getting Michael Dell a say in the shareholders meeting is of course the priviledge of wealth and there can be no doubt that Dell's views on the market are not without audience in Raleigh. For MSD to diversify his investements is just sound financial management, I mean would you hedge your entire financial future on Dell Computer?? ;)
speculation of Michael dell actually buying RedHat is, on this information, totally unfounded.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
The analyst does not see the purchase as a signal that Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat.
I does not not understand neither what the hell that sentence is supposed to not mean.
Umm... actually that's not what they say. RTFA! Analysts do not see this as a sign that Dell is interested in acquiring RedHat.
By the way... Analysists? droped? Spellcheck!
I underestimated you guys! I'd have thought that this move, which seems to be his investment group making an arbitrage play, would be overspun as a ringing endorsement of Red Hat by Dell, and Michael Dell. Instead we get "It's a plot!!! A plot to destroy Lunix!!!!"
I also like the way the submitter managed to completely invert the statement about how analysts _do_ _not_ believe this is takeover attempt.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Dell -neither the person nor the company (what on earth was the editor thinking...)- also droped $100M in an effort to buy AMD.
This reflects the obvious DELL strategy of neither relying on Windows, nor on Intel...
... like all good businessmen, whoever wins the OS wars, he wants to profit from it. If you can't beat them, join them.
Michael Dell has always been a forward thinker (as evidenced by his innovation in sales techniques online) and I would imagine that he sees the potential in Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if his half-hearted attempts to sell Linux desktops were only half-hearted due to MS pressure and threats. MS has Dell and the other OEMs over a barrel. Dell may want his freedom, and Red Hat may be the "get out of MS Jail free" card he needs.
I believe Linux actually is truly desktop ready -- and this is coming from a former Mac guy who relishes his ease-of-use more than anything. If I can use Ubuntu daily, anyone can. And I'm sure Dell has seen Linux's progress as well as anybody else here and is betting on it continuing. He's getting in on the "ground floor", so to speak.
So, it wasn't Michael Dell, then. Nor was it Dell, the famed computer vendor. That only leaves Del Boy from 'Only Fools and Horses'. Heh, those crazy Cockneys and their money-making schemes! I bet they mess it up and wind up penniless again!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
$100M accounts for 1% of his estimated cash value... so not really a big risk for Michael.
The irony, which few people appreciate today, but which will become painfully obvious within the next decade, is that there is more money in free software than in the commercial variety.
Dell is putting some cash on the obvious Linux market leader. Personally, I'd put my $100m on Novell.
Oh, and where "is" the money in free software? That's the lovely part. It's not in the software at all, but in the explosion of valuable products and services that it enables. We're only at the start of this process, it's barely visible.
My blog
Dell pre-installs Red Hat on all server machines to be sold.
Friday's headline:
Michael Dell sells shares in Red Hat for big profit.
I wonder if that's enough to make a decent desktop version of Linux out of Redhat. That would be sweet.
Lets see... If I were Michael Dell and I wanted to get Linux in some of my boxen, Dell's acquisition department would be doing this instead of my personal investment arm. Besides, Microsoft would never allow it.
Who knows... perhaps Billy G has some of those debentures himself.
Newsfollow.com
Maybe he just sees it as a nice stock to make him more money? It would take far more than 100M to even start thinking of a takeover. Though 100M will put them in 1st rank when it comes to Share %. At most I see him not liking the way the company is going, and thinks that pouring money in and getting a rather loud position among it's shareholders will allow him to better guide the company. He doesn't want them to fade into oblivion and get stuck with a SuSE/Novell vender lock. As for the claim that they want to fight against their competition(I'm guessing the OP ,meant to type this as competence makes little sense) in the server market? What? They use SuSE/Novell, what would the lessening of option get them?And how does RedHat have anything to do with their competition with IBM or Sun? Who happen to also use RedHat.
Please, try not to sound so stupid...
visualize a million dollars
Captalistic ends never fail me!
This is a warning shot to M$ over their bough, straight to M$. Start producing quality, and listening to the people - b/c I'm not wasting my dollars forever.
Finally, perhaps we'll see computers shipped with an OS that does not suck.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
Couldn't $100M just as easily have bought him the infrastructure to launch his own distro? Dellinux, Dellibian, Dellux(e), etc... That would have been an interesting precedent to set.
> Dell - neither the person nor the company
So...a "Dell", who/which we can surmise is extant, who is neither a person nor a company named "Dell", has "dropped" $100M "onto" Red Hat, which is a company and not a person.
Okay...
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
denentures are debt. Michael did not invest in Red Hat in the sense that he bought into the companies long term success. He loaned them money. If they can't pay it back, Michael's $(99.5*10^6) may not be sunk. It might be a secured loan. I'll admit, I did not RTFA carefully enough to know if it is secured or not. Of course if the rate of return is high enough it's unlikely that RHAT won't be around long enough for principal recovery to be gravy on the steak.
:-)
My $12K in Novell stock is different. It represents faith in the company as opposed to faith in the company being able to pay me back.
Then again, Michael may be playing off Redhat against Microsoft to get bettr pricing, just like he does with AMD&Intel which could well result in the loan paying off many times over for his company, which he owns a lot of, in short order.
Nowthat Senor dillitante investor has spoken, let's here from some folks who know what they're talking about
Dropping $100M sounds like it might crush RedHat. All those dollar bills piled up on top of the roof...
Imagine if they were Sacagaweas. Those poor Linux geeks wouldn't stand a chance with dollar coins raining down on their heads.
I have heard from two different sources, one of them a friend who has worked as strategic management consultant for Dell for about eight years, that Dell is planning on offering the choice of a pre-installed Linux distro(Red Hat?) on all notebooks and desktops by late summer. Perhaps this would at least in part explain the investment mentioned.
They might fight their "competitors", but not their "competence".
;-)
Yes, that submission certainly had an incompetent wording!
before it split. That made it just a little depressing when it was down to $4 around a year later.
Then again, I'm just whining about a $1K investement I made on a lark with their IPO. The dot bomb was obviously MUCH crueler to others than this. I'll shut up now.
Sweet informative mod.
I keep hearing rumors lately that Dell might be teaming up with Red Hat in order to offer Linux based systems. Does anyone know more about that?
Red Hat has always had people wanting to give them money (as in investment, not just buying shares). From the beginning, Matthew Szulik was adamant about getting investors that brought something to the table besides their chequebook. Michael Dell certainly fits in that category, and i wouldn't be surprised if Red hat lobbied him hard for this investment.
If RH is going to get anywhere on the desktop (their "next move" for the last 18 months), then they will need Dell Computer, and MSD still has some sway there.
This isn't just money, it's money+channel.
davejenkins.com |
How much does $100M weigh? You could get hurt if someone dropped that much money onto you.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
No matter how rich Michael Dell is $100 million is no small change. It's pretty obvious that he's as fed up with the MS BS as the rest of the world. He's looking to the future and it's not with MS. Good for him and good luck.
Mr. Gates also invested $100mil in Apple. It's called hedging your bets.
Currently bidding on sig
It was Dell - the asparagus!
This is really great news so lets hope someone with WBEL enthusiasm steps up to build a respectable community site.
Apple buys NeXT, NeXT now rules Apple.
Dell buys into Red Hat, ???
(Just kidding!)
But the interesting point in this debate is who really needs who? IBM Pcs have gone to Lomovo, HP are all over the place so Dell is really the only game in town for the non-mission critical end. Microsoft has to work with Dell and I dare say Dell is not overly happy with the delays to Longhorn which must be impacting the timing of the next upgrade cycle. And all of Dell's own mission critical stuff is already running Linux.
I *any* Dell invested US$100M in a company (ie Redhat) that they were planning on doing future business with, prior to any public announcements they could very possibly be accussed of insider trading.
With all of the class action lawsuits going around these days I would doubt that Dell would want to risk any scrutiny for a "simple" investment. This leads me to believe that Dell has no intentions of significantly altering their current state in relation to Redhat, pre-installed linux, new offerings, etc.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Dell is also sending a message to Microsoft: Just because we haven't embraced Linux at this juncture doesn't mean we won't in the future. It's a good way of letting MS know that he's not in their pocket.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
... but one wonders what's behind of this move ...
How about doubling or tripling that $100M? RHAT is a volative stock that has some pretty big swings. If you time your purchase right sometime over the next couple of years you may be able to realize a pretty big gain. Linux is becoming more important (fwiw I'm not referring to the desktop) and Red Hat is well poised to benefit from that. I think it is a good medium term investment.
Also to assume some sort of conspiracy is ignorant. Dell is a business. They offer Linux when it is profitable to do so. If you can't order it pre-installed on your desktop box it is because there are not enough of you to pay Dell for adjusting their highly streamlined assembly process. If you think offering Linux is as simple as having a hard drive image handly you are in over your head here.
See what I've been reading.
When you've got multiple billions of dollars in liquid assets, investing one tenth of one of those billions in a company that you like is a no-brainer. Risk, shmisk.
Michael Dell has been a capitalist his whole life, from selling newspaper subscriptions to selling PCs out of his dorm room. He's always been a risk-taker and an achiever. I'm not really impressed with him as a deep thinker, from the few interviews and articles I've seen him do, but that's not his area.
His goal was becoming the top PC maker, even bigger than IBM. His victory in that arena is complete, having driven IBM out of the PC market. Those of us who have watching the computer scene since the '70s should think back to what IBM was then.
Suppose a new kind of car were invented that a guy in his garage could make, and one of those garage hackers figured out how to mass-market his vehicle. If he did it so well that GM decided to get out of the consumer market altogether, that would rival what Dell did.
So what do he do when at 40 having accomplished what seemed like an impossible goal? I'd want my life to mean something besides business, but I'm not him.
I suspect you'll see Dell try to accomplish some new "impossible" goal, whether it's space exploration, a cancer cure, seawater desalination, selling electric cars, or whatever.
I don't know, because I don't dream big enough.
sigs, as if you care.
Only a veriy foolish CEO would tie himself to single source.
That you, AMD?
if there is any chance that Dell might acquire Red Hat down the line it would be a smart move of Michael Dell to invest some of his personal money into Red Hat.
this might sound far fetched but since Dell is planning on selling Linux systems and Red Hat is still a small company by comparison an acquisition seems not too far off. thats just my unqualified speculation.
I was looking at the charts for RHAT (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=RHAT&t=1y) and am surprised by its precipitous fall last summer. The stock now trades at half its early-2004 levels. Did they miss their targets and get beaten up by financial analysts? Is this a response to Novell+SuSE? Can it be that analysts really think the SCO suits are going to be successful? I'd guess that, if anything, RHAT may well be victorious in its counter-suit.
Certainly as someone who follows the industry from the sidelines, I can't see anything in the competitive environment that has changed significantly enough in the past year to justify such a fall from grace.
Maybe Michael Dell just thinks RHAT is a good deal at current levels.
Michael Dell is just making sure that he has multiple sources for his supplies.
Would Michael Dell suggesting to Dell the company that they should start using RH more, be a conflict of interests for the other investors? He has a vested interest in both companies. What if he bought a decent size of AMD stock and then within the next few months Dell the company decides to start using AMD chips? Maybe there is no oversight for transactions like that but it sure as hell seems that there should be.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Micheal Dell is not the CEO of Dell, Inc.
Michael Dell is not a commodity manager for Dell, Inc.
Obviously he has input into the strategy for the company, but I don't think he single-handedly negotiates deals with suppliers.
Michael Dell only needs a single source for the OS on his personal computer. What Dell,Inc puts on their computers is unrelated to this story.
I don't know how much "muscle" Michael Dell has, but I'm sure he has enough "money" to afford the higher cost of a single personal copy of Microsoft Windows XP, if that is what you mean.
I was bored this morning so I decided to check into the facts of this. I am no lawyer or financial expert, but if this even exists -- it looks more like a loan than an investment.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Not sure why you felt compelled to include the Google News link in the post. But I suspect that is the kind of thing that puts Google News on shaky ground with content providers.
MSNBC prints a story, and you arguably give more credit (by putting the link first) for that content to Google News.
I tried the link and of course got trashed (as I guess everyone but me knows msn.com doesn't play friendly with firefox. So, I opened up an old version of IE (work computer you know...nothing (legal) to be done about it...) to get an annoying, floating, swimming pop up. From whom? Why msn.com, wanting me to take a survey.
Some forms of stupidity are terminal.
I hope.
Investors invest because they want to see a return on their investments. Michael Dell is an investor, he sees an opportunity to make money! It seems simple to me.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
purposes, investing in redhat was a sure way to show a loss for 2004. If that was the plan it worked it seems since by the 1st of the year it was about a 50M loss.
Michael Dell has an investment foundation called MSD investments that has 70 Wall Street investment professionals working for it. Notice that I said "it" and not "him". This is because his foundation is an independent entity that makes decisions based upon increasing the value of his holdings. It's clear that the fund employed an arbitrage strategy by buying the bonds and simultaneously shorting the stock. An alternative to this story could have been that "MICHAEL DELL SHORTS $100MM OF RED HAT'S SHARES!!!" or even further "MICHAEL DELL LOSES $50MM IN CONVERTIBLE BOND VALUE!!!". The truth is most likely along the lines of "MICHAEL DELL EMPLOYS A CONVERTIBLE BOND ARBITRAGE STRATEGY IN RED HAT THAT YIELDS A NEARLY RISK-LESS RETURN OF 11.4% OR 5.3% OVER PRIME!!!". This was not a bet on Red Hat being a good investment, this was a bet to exploit a pricing differential between bond and equity markets.
In other words: Dell is NOT buying Red Hat. Please proceed to pull all panties out of wadded areas.
"Via google news, whilst doing butt-clenches, feeling guilty having had extra marmalade on my toast this morning, I found an article at MSNBC...
In future, please just give us the relevant links. The editors around here are so bad they don't even notice people giving out about them. Editors sans narcissism, what will they think of next?
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
There are alot of companies in the oil industry who already install Red Hat on their desktops. Bug market for Dell - especailly in Texas.
I'm not too much a fan of RedHat. Why couldnt he just invested in Suse? Would of helped me out too since I have some stock in Novell ;)
drope, tr. v. [Scatterhead English, from drop]:
1. To refuse to accept, as in packets.
2. To apply for a mortgage
3. To host a web page but only in German.
4. To aspire to contribute to Wikipedia but only in French.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Dear Mike,
Thanks.
Love,
Tim
XOXOXO
There's another benefit.
There's something to be said for investing in something which is the polar opposite of what your employer (or in Michael Dell's case, company) is doing. In very simplistic terms, it's reasonable to assume that if Linux usage does increase significantly, it'll be at the cost of Microsoft.
This could bite Dell (the company) pretty hard given their close ties with Microsoft. However, as far as Michael Dell is concerned, he's hedging his bets. If Microsoft remains strong, his company wins. If Microsoft loses significantly to Linux (and he can't turn his company into a Linux-lovin' company rather than Just Another Microsoft Box-Shifter pretty quickly), he's still covered.
what we need is for RedHat to use this 100m to develop a standard GUI such as apple's OS X that can mainstream linux into the desktop arena. The window managers now for linux are pathetic compared to apple's desktop management. This could fund a very new and very large step for Redhat and linux in general. does anyone know when microsoft is set to sue over this, claiming the money was actually moneies that was laundred by SCO?
Bill Gates was caught by police after lighting a paper bag full of dog poop on Michael Dell's doorstep, ringing the door bell and running away.
In an interview after the event, Mr. Dell said (as he carefully cleaned bits of dog poop from the grooves of his sneakers with a size 000 toothpick) "Golly, I wonder why anyone would want to do something like that?"
Dude, you're getting Red Hat!
Circumcision is child abuse.
My shiny new (thank you ebay!) MS Natural Keyboard Pro thanks you for its nice fresh covering of lasagna.
ASS.
"and that will never happen because IBM refuses to take on another OS attempt."
...
In 2000 IBM whas the owner of SUSE because SUSE whas bankrupt financially and that they could not repay IBM investment.
In 2004 IBM sold SUSE to Novel
You hit the nail on the head there!
Michael Dell is a BUSINESS MAN. He wants to make MONEY. Red Hat is just that: another revenue stream.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
*cough* CPU vendors *cough*
don't ever drop the soap in martha's presence.
elegant floral bouquet and hollandaise sauce... not appropriate for all occasions.
she's vicious.
last heard, dell picks up the 100 millon that he dropped. the check that he'd written was for himself, he just dropped it at the redhat campus
I don't know why this comment is rated so highly -- Dell the man (not the company) bought into Red Hat, so the argument that Dell-as-CEO made this decision is silly. If he had, then Dell Corp would have made the investment.
The classification of his investment is a matter of semantics, plain and simple. Since Dell, the individual and not the company is making the investment, the company's board of directors and other executives can down play the move. This helps to keep Microsoft at bay, as indicated above.
While I've never worked for Dell, contractor or otherwise, it's no secret that there are quite a few employees that like Red Hat and have been pushing it to the execs for quite some time. This is what lead the company to include it in their server products in the first place.
The timing of the investment is interesting because Red Hat has beaten street estimates due to a rise in subscriptions (found in this CNET article.) This must have the Red Hat development team jumping for joy. Dell's involvement will only drive them to introduce innovative technologies to both RHEL and Red Hat Desktop.
What I believe will happen in the not too distant future is that Dell (the company) will:
* Ante up and start promoting Red Hat based servers more than they have done in the past. While it may piss off MS, they'll respond, albeit gently, it's just business and keep going.
* Create a sales bundle for small to medium businesses that will include an RHEL server and x amount of desktops loaded with Red Hat Desktop. All this with a migration team waiting in the wings to help the company through the initial learning curve.
* Similar sales bundle for larger corporations, including clustering services and SAN related products.
and finally...
* Further collaborate with Red Hat to offer special pricing on multi-tiered support packages for Dell customers switching from Windows based systems. Since Dell already offers Linux training services and the like, it would basically be a strengthening of its partnership.
Only time will tell! We'll revisit the issue in a few months as I'm sure it will garner more attention when Dell (the company) makes a move.
Once upon a time, Dell had their own SVR4 UNIX Distro. Perhaps Mr Dell has a passion for OS's.
I wouldn't be supprised if this was more to do with Microsoft, to send them a message that they don't have the world over a barrel, than it is a passion of OS's. As computers get cheaper, every machine sold with Windows on it is going to be cutting into an increasing amount of profit margin, and just as the industry is getting cheaper - Microsoft is getting more expensive, perhaps this is more like the corporate way of saying f**k U, without putting anything on "Dell" - the company.
Brave boy, but foolish.
:)
Sorry
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But to have $100M problem like this must be bad no?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I note that (if I'm not confused or out of date) Compaq is noted for coming out with proprietary hardware that isn't well supported by Linux, while Dell's stuff is more open and supported well.
If that's (still) true, increasing acceptance of Linux in the marketplace gives Dell an increased competitive advantage over Compaq.
(Then again, maybe Dell is just being a nice guy. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes, it is called SEC, i believe. And the offense is called insider trade information. This is what happened to that cooking lady on TV, whatever the fuck her name is.
She got caught, who knows what Mr. Dell is going to do.
cat
Dell is already using linux - every Server you order from them without a preinstalled OS comes with a weird linux installation on it that is Dell's OS installation tool. If you want to install Windows, well this tool does it for you. If you ask me, Dell is just offering what they can sell, and there are just not enough people who really want a Server of Desktop with linux preinstalled, there are just too many distributions, and people won't just take any, they want one specific. Similar argumets probably hold true for the choice of CPU manufacturer: if the price/performance ratio is good enough, and most importantly, the box works, few people care who made the CPU.
This is the next major shift in the industry. As much as server-based applications are important and significant, the PC is an unstoppable force that can only be bested, not beaten. The next major shift is to the "Personal Server" where a collection of apps live on a person's individual personal hosted server (either on their home lan, or at a number of PS certified ISP's), that provide the same capabilities feature-wise and convenience-wise that the major Web Apps of today do, but with the same control and privacy that people have come to expect. For some evidence of this, take a look at the dedicated server market.
I dunno why he would invest. I've used Red Hat for years and thought it was fantastic until recently. I recently moved to Fedora Core 3 and it's an unmitigated piece of crap. (Well, in perspective to previous RedHat versions) Many pieces of the software do not work properly. (Try doing a getent passwd --service=ldap someday, it just hangs) Maybe the Enterprise Editions (or whatever they are calling it) are much better but Fedora is junk. I can't recommend it to anyone these days.
based on whether Dell were planning to offer Linux Enterprise desktops or laptops. Who would have more of an interest in a Linux distro than a company that images hard-drives or creates recovery CD's for their own proprietary HW systems?
I think it's just a sign that PC manufacturers hate having to put Windows on every machine they build as much as many of their customers hate having to pay the Windows Tax in order to acquire a premanufactured machine.
Apparently, he is quite oblivious of the SCO threat. Or, he doesn't quite believe in their arguments? Wonder which?
1. Invest $100 million in Red Hat
2. ???
3. Profit!
Bruce
Droped? Spel chekc plaese.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
While it might not be obvious to Dell's home customers, as an architect at a very large company that does a very large amount of server business with Dell, I can tell you that they have been pushing Red Hat extremely aggressively for the last year or two. I see the pitches, roadmaps, and political jockeying from all the major 'enterprise' vendors, and I do not see anyone pitching anything as hard as Dell is now pitching Red hat.
/.ers, and don't except any love from them, even if you're getting it now (even as I type this on a machine running FC3). I see them making lots of the same mistakes Sun and Microsoft have each made over the years (it basically boils down to arrogance and disregard for the customers / community, respectively), and it's really a shame.
/soapbox
It's an obvious and core component of their enterprise strategy to make the 'UNIX migrations to Red Hat' pitch. As you look at the typical Fortune 500 datacenter, and see the huge percentage of installed hardware occupied by Sun and IBM gear running UNIX, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what Dell's angle with Red Hat is. Dell has nothing to gain by marketing Windows migrations to Linux (on either the desktop or the server) - you're buying roughly the same number of units either way, and so that'd only piss off MS for no return. But, there is obvious value in making a huge, concerted, brilliantly-executed marketing push for switching from Solaris and AIX to Red Hat (and believe me, they are).
As to everyone above relating their Red Hat warm fuzzies - don't believe it for a microsecond. If you heard just five minutes of their current pitch to Fortune 100 brass, you'd choke on your bile. I don't believe I can go into specifics, but I'll just say that I've never even heard Microsoft spout anything so evil, rawly mercenary, or misguided, and I've heard it all. Red Hat is not your friend,
It seems sometimes we get so swept up in evangelizing Linux and cheering the success of Linux-based companies like Red Hat that we miss the fact that there is nothing to prevent Red Hat from becoming as negative a force in the industry as Microsoft has become, and it looks to me like they have every intention of doing exactly that.
I am a huge fan of Linux adoption, but you have to consider what's being displaced. The vast majority of enterprise adoption is being driven by the big x86 server hardware vendors (again, gee, I wonder why), at the expensive of a very excellent operating system in Solaris, which also happen to be a hotbed of OS innovation. People without in-depth and long-standing experience with both Linux and Solaris / SunOS might be very surprised to see how many 'Linux' features can be ultimately traced back to Sun. To me, that's just not worth it, this type of robbing Peter to pay Paul, outside of pure and unjustifiable fanboyism. It's not good for the industry, and not good for the community, ultimately.
Linux (not Red Hat) should succeed because it's fundamentally better (if and when it is) than its competition, not because it's Dell, HP, and IBM's ticket to increased x86 server sales revenue, and their marketing machines severely outclass Sun's (believe me, they do).
Linux (not Red Hat) should be something we evangelize because it represents a shift to open standards and interfaces, and the companies that should feel the sting of that shift should be the ones who have failed us on this front (gee, guess who I'm talking about, and no, it sure isn't Sun).
The odds are that Michael Dell realizes that Microsoft's Windows is slowly, but surely, losing its mighty strength. Since he is an entrepreneur, I doubt he really care's who is the winner, just as long as it is profitable... which Red Hat shows good sign of maintaining; unlike Microsoft, who has grown so large the only way to go is down.
This wouldn't have anything to do with Intel owning a bit of RedHat given that they were one of the original VCs of RedHat by any chance would it?
And we all know how close Dell is with Intel. They are the last manufacturer to not have adopted AMD aren't they?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Dell's future is Lenova - the Chinese company that recently bought IBM's desktop system operations. Dell see's the future of cheap PC's is going to be in Asia and wants to settle up with Red Hat instead of Red Flag. Dell doesn't give a Jewish poop about AMD, SUN or anyone but Lenova. It will basically boil down to a nationalist loyalty test among Chinese engineers - do they go with Dell or go with the home corporation? Linux is just icing on the computer cake.
http://www.davisva.com/charleswu/IBMLenova.pdf
ya thats a hard decision for the Chinese business men. Work with Chinese busines and make almost nothing or make millions of off the Americans??? Hmmmm what could be the answer??? I guess we will never know.
Red Hat should send the check back and demand
return postage!
HA!
Michael "Jackson" Dell, suck my Red Hat Dick!
Michael didn't even ask me to put on a condom.
Toodles!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it such a great investment? Redhat's history matches a lot of other relatively successful bubble stocks (i.e. its value sucks compared to pre-bubble-burst, and looks pretty good compared to post-bubble-burst but it hasn't done much lately (except jump up a buck following the Dell announcement).
The idea that this is anything other than a message to Microsoft is pretty far-fetched.
hawk