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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?"
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 invested in Red Hat -- not donated.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
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...
... 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.
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
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
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.
Didn't that come with NeXTStep? I think the top machines were 50Mhz 486's at the time, but maybe I'm confused.
That would have been around 1990.
sigs, as if you care.
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.
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.
You've got $12K invested in X but can't spell "hear"?
:(
I must have done something wrong. I'm fairly good at spelling but totally penniless.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone