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HHS Signs Major Linux Deal With Novell
An anonymous reader writes "The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has signed a major deal with Novell to begin rolling out their enterprise server and desktop products on government systems. The contract provides unlimited use of Novell products to about 70,000 at HHS, including about 30,000 NIH users. Under the arrangement Novell is providing to HHS 'unlimited access, upgrade protection and technical support' for products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop, patch management, and a range of identity-based services for management, integration and security."
Why is Novell so underrated? Their stuff works and it's the only consistently supported software around!
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Some strategic marketing, and porting of code, Novell becomes relevant again, and in a big way.
Go Novell!
When it comes to large institutions and licensing with Linux vendors, a number of important questions are raised.
- Is it profitable?
- The way in which this agreement is done could harm Linux in this environment overall.
Just some thoughts.... I could be wrong.While it can be said that the costs of usage in the corporate workplace of Linux is less than other environments, it can also be said the support costs are higher. The relevant quote in this case: "unlimited access, upgrade protection and technical support". While seemingly a good thing for bolstering Linux in this market, who knows in the end if that will cost Novell more than they can handle, and thereby discourage other vendors in this market from the kind of aggressive marketing they should be engaging in if they wish to expand.
According to this article, HHS and NIH don't have to migrate from other platforms. While the kneejerk reaction could be "hooray, choice!", a different reaction could be that these products aren't getting a truly fair test in this market, that is to say, showing its robustness or lack thereof in the primary operating market. Time will tell, I suppose.
The Crimson Dragon
In my experience with Novell eDirectory and Microsoft ADS, it's a good thing they chose Novell, particularly for an operation of their size. This is also good news for Novell. Here's hoping Novell can make this all work well enough that nobody's left gun-shy afterwards.
Can you develop with Novell Desktop Linux?
I've always liked the brand.
This is my sig.
Certainly not saying this isn't a bad thing (its damn good tbh), but regarding technical support.
How often has anyone actually needed technical support for the OS?
Is the knowledge thats its there just a comforter to PHBs, or do people routinely call these big vendors for support, and if so, what level? (
"my icons have all moved around" vs "something on my cpu appears to allow locked files to be overwritten under these conditions" ?
liqbase
from the brink. They were sooo circling the drain as a company until the got involved with Linux. It's nice to see them back in the saddle. I've always been of the opinion that Novell makes some of the finest software in the world. I mean, please... nothing was/is better than NDS. Full stop. Borderware is a damn fine piece of security software. Netware was/is bulletproof.
Kudos to Novell's management for seeing the light.
seriously, this is a boon for Novell... how long will this keep them alive?
Gogo Novell!
.. and that (as Martha says) would be a GOOD THING.
Now if we could just get the DHS to run it, we'd be even MORE secure...
But the best part? It'd REALLY piss Billy Gates off
= Grow a brain...
Kind of interesting. I work at HHS in Rockville, the second largest HHS building. We were running Novell for a long time but 2 months ago switched to Microsoft ADS. I wonder if this means we will be going back? If so, somebody is getting canned because most of the servers were down for long periods of time during the switch accumulating quite a bit of lost time and resources.
Basically the way I read this is "It aint for everyone or everyjob...but put in the right place and in the right hands it makes a lot of sense". Which is why I've always run a mixed shop here.
I work for the Dept of Health & Human Services as a Solaris admin, so I have the insider info here. Everyone - and I mean everyone - knows that the Bush administration would instantly fire the head of ANY cabinet dept that failed to purchase Microsoft software. The current thinking within the administration is that open source software is "unamerican" and "socialist".
Everyone here at the DHHS knows that this is just a play to secure a better deal from Microsoft.
So sorry, slashdot... this has happened so many times, I really didn't think you'd get suckered again.
I don't know about anyone else, but every time i hear news like this, i get goosebumps. I admit, i wasn't a big fan of Novell a few years ago, and was really worried when they bought out SUSE, but they have pretty much stuck to their guns and have contributed a lot to the world of Linux. They're really helping to give Linux a good name, and getting the MS-only sys admins to take notice. A lot of system admins and 'decision' makers that I know have "heard" of Linux but doesn't think it's secure/stable/mature enough to be used in their business, but, with a big name like Novell attached to it, they're really starting to consider it. Thanks Novell, and keep up the good work.
tourettes
No, no, no, you've got it all wrong. It's the GNU/US Department of Health and Human Services (GNU/HHS). I'm going to report this to the Free Software Foundation's Department of Making Sure GNU Appears Anywhere GNU/Linux is Used (GNU/RMS).
How many shares of RHAT do you own? A little advice: sell. Novell has the experienced sales force and existing sales channels (established from years of Netware sales) that will beat RHAT on any major deal.
Whether one product is "better" than another product is secondary to most buying decisions.
They should have gone with Red Hat
suse is owned by novell. the novell services for linux were developed and are fully supported on suse. when you go for novell linux, you go for suse. your advice would be to use redhat because of the support? can i have some of that drug you're on?
I remember a /. article a few years back stating that Novell was going to help Linux step into a mature contender in the Enterprise sphere. I laughed, because I viewed Novell as a has been, but now I have to eat my hat (it's red).
This space available for rent.
Pack a bowl for me too, pal... I knew this would turn into a distro flame-fest...and you fired the first shot..
Novell/SUSE is a very polished product. Is Red Hat still using that blue curve stuff? With SUSE you can still select Gnome/KDE.
Considering that large numbers of customers are disillusioned with RedHat's ability to support their products, many are switching to SuSE.
It's not at all surprising that Novell is scoring large deals like this one. RedHat has been slowing getting one of the worst reputations for support in the industry, even surpassing Microsoft in the "poor support" arena.
Novell, conversely, has a long history of providing excellent support - every company has its problems, and I'm not saying every call is resolved perfectly with Novell, but there is a very high customer satisfaction rating with both the paid and free support options.
...for contractors such as myself whose clients include big civilian federal agencies.
I try to pitch open technologies when I can, but there is historical bias against open platforms like Linux. The more announcements like this happen, the easier it becomes to make a case for Linux/BSD on the server, and maybe some day on the desktop. I suspect that as a few of the more progressive agencies adopt Linux, the more conservative ones will follow.
Protecting Windows against the malware of the week in a big enterprise is a tough job. Enterprise system management is also a tough job without an army of foot soldiers who scurry around fixing breakages in software distribution system endpoints.
Linux/BSD starts looking pretty good when you start talking tens of thousands of machines to manage...
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying: ''This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above.'' (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
Um, people seem to be leaving a very important part out of this... And I quote: "An NIH source says there are no plans to "unseat" Microsoft products, which are widely used throughout HHS."
It's a little SILLY to choose an enterprise Linux distro base on how 'purty the desktop is. They are buying mostly SERVER products.
According to the article, my contacts at Novell, and Novell themselves - http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?contenti d=879a46d41fe14010VgnVCM1000000100007f____ , they have already signed the multi-million dollar deal. Novell has begun using it as part of their advertising campaign.
So are you saying they spent millions of dollars on a multi-year deal just to secure a better deal with Microsoft?
Wouldn't they have just threatened to go with Novell if they were trying to pressure Microsoft for a better price?
Well, what happens is the sysadmins bury the purchase of a recent Red Hat distro in the paperwork and we all just load it up on our Linux boxes.
.
No problem.
Dick Cheney has not threatened me.
Yet.
If you don't beleive HHS runs Linux, check this out Biowulf
I agree - NDS is great. It's more simple, more flexible, and faster then Active Directory.
There used to be some serious advantages to using Netware - very stable, and all remotely managable.
Enter: Netware 5. It's this dog of a patch that sits on top of old 4.11. They haven't updated any of the client admin tools. They added all this crap Java stuff to the console of the server. The IPX/IP compatibility stuff stinks. The system is less stable.
They've managed to clean shit up a little with 6.0+ but it's still crap.
But that's not to say that their Linux offerings are bad, or that the company is bad. I think Novell has the potential to be real competition for the business desktop environment.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Quick, Steve, to the bat jet! Time for another dose of the monkey dancing CEO for those rubes in DC!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
With Red Hat you can still select Gnome/KDE. WHat drugs are you on? Anyway, RTFA. Server products.
They are buying mostly SERVER products.
Uummmmm, no. From TFA "Under the arrangement Novell is providing to HHS "unlimited access, upgrade protection and technical support" for products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop, patch management, and a range of identity-based services for management, integration and security."
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Identity Managment was a major component of the deal and Novell has ported their proven eDirectory and XML based products onto the Suse platform to provide this in a package that integrates with existing Novell and Microsoft environments. This is leverage that Red Hat doesn't have.
(Disclaimer: I use Novell and Suse, but don't own any stock)
"The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale." - Arthur C. Clarke
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
This one doesn't even pass the smell test.
For one, the White House has nothing to do with software purchases by government agencies. Plenty of government agencies use non-Microsoft and open source software - including the FBI, NSA, CIA, and others.
Second, the HHS has already signed the deal with Novell, which means your argument is utterly moot.
Finally, you offer absolutely no evidence that you work for HHS. In fact, I'd put money that you didn't even get the name of the agency right. Not once have I heard a single HHS employee use the term DHHS, and I used to know several people who worked there. An employee of a government agency wouldn't mess up the name of their agency in the way you did.
Arguing that the Administration would use the terms "unamerican" or "socialist" is also completely asinine on its face. If there was a push to eliminate open-source software, there are plenty of bureaucratic ways of doing it. And not once have I seen a government memo that would use such terms to describe anything.
Based on your comments, I can only conclude that your post is a blatant troll.
SUSE not Polished?
Who are you trying to kid?
SUSE doesn't support illegal multimedia playing, and aside from some card games doesn't focus on games or 3D accelerated video, but it makes an excellent and stable workstation or server and Yast2 makes management child's play.
We replaced RHEL3 with SELS9 where I work and they've been faultless 24/7 since the day they were installed, about three months ago. I can't say anything about Novell's service because we haven't needed it.
However, we've experienced RH's "service"... In fact, their "solution" to a problem we were having were the same two URL's I discovered before I submitted a service request. It was their "service" that convinced us to drop RH. It certainly wasn't worth $795/server.
I've heard through our grapevine that when Novell rolls with a Linux based directory/ldap service with network login as transparent as it is now on Windows workstations connecting to a Novell network, we'll be moving enmass to it.
Novell's eDirectory is far and away the easiest DS to manage. I wonder if Novell's Linux push with its excellent directory and print services will give people like me who adminned Netware a new chance in the industry.
This is one major problem I see with Novell and it also paints a bad picture. Why won't Novell do this noble thing?
I guess that's what is called a major overhaul. Talk about fragging someone's hootch! There is going to be Training Dayz, and Training Weekz.
Typical liberal Slashdot mods.
"Novell Linux Desktop" ?
Do they just plan to run linux, or are they going to have some userspace tools as well? maybe GNU/X11 ?
HHS is directed by Michael Leavitt the former governer of Utah. It's no coincidence that one of Utah's major IT employeers got the contract with that in mind.
For example, we are rolling out more than 10,000 new POS systems to a few thousand location. The main software the POS system runs is Java based and is supported under GNU/Linux or MS Windows XP Pro. The third party developers of the Java application recommended to run under a GNU/Linux desktop (they suggested SuSE). However when our PHB's looked at the total costs, it was actually cheaper to use MS Win XP Pro than Red Hat! I think Red Hat has done great things for GNU/Linux, however I believe their pricing is holding back faster Linux server adoption. This is especially true for large corporations (like where I work) that have big licensing deals with MS. We have Solaris, Linux and MS Windows servers running. We could use Linux servers for far more tasks, however the cost of Red Hat is holding our Linux expansion back.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
On it sits an Apple. What is he going to do? Fire himself?
Interesting comment.
If ANYONE would be willing to go on record with this claim, then maybe a Congressional hearing would be due about how the administration is supporting a particular monopoly. Softwaregate?
Wow, such a fanboy.
Hate to say it, but RedHat feels downright amatuerish next to SuSE, even before Novell came into things. They make bizarre decisions with respect to cutting-edge versus stability and their product, ending up frequently with stale versions and unstable features, providing piss-poor support and thinking they're the king of the freaking world.
I'm sorry, just in my dealings with SuSE and RedHat, I've had to deal with RedHat more because their stuff has been more broken, going so far as to point out one-line fixes to their enterprise kernel that have been part of vanilla linux for a year and have them reject them as not necessary, even though my systems were consistently kernel panicing because of that bug. They really have some issues. They have good people working there too, but the prevailing attitude is a very pompous and not conducive to good support. In essence, they frequently act like a monopoly that doesn't have to worry. Maybe it's because so many fanboys are drawn to them in applying for work and they have a hard time overcoming the signal to noise ratio in that regard when hiring.
SuSE has typically had a more solid product to begin with, but when problems have occurred, they have been far more professional and reasonable in helping to solve the problems.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I wouldn't be surprised if soon (thinking within the next year or two) I walk into a Best Buy or CompUSA and see Novell Linux Desktop box sets on the shelves. I think Novell could really make this happen and do so successfully if they play their cards right. It seems like they're going in the right direction so far.
Erik http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~rattles
People have been begging "government" to save our tax dollars by going with something other than Microsoft such as Linux. I haven't read the article yet so forgive me and I didn't see where any particular savings was going to happen, but it will show how credible Linux (+Novell services) is on a large scale deployment like this. Will this be the first? No. But I can't think of too many other examples off hand while I'm sure there must be.
If this suffers from big problems, we'll hear about it for a long time. If it's a success, we'll cite it for a longer time.
Mike Leavitt is the new secretary for HHS,
appointed by Bush. (He used to be at EPA).
Mike Leavitt is the former Govenor of Utah.
Novell HQ is in Utah (despite being
incorporated elsewhere).
Coincidence?
"An NIH source says there are no plans to "unseat" Microsoft products, which are widely used throughout HHS."
Microsoft's got a huge lock on groupware, with Outlook/Exchange locking seats to Microsoft with each other's installation, and locking each to Windows (and vice versa) with each installation of Microsoft's OS.
Novell sells groupware that competes directly with Exchange. They even provide code, sales and frontline support services to Netline's Open-Xchange, the open source project upon which much of their high-end groupware is based. O-X connects transparently to Outlook, and natively to Evolution, Netscape, and other open source clients that run on SuSE Linux, which Novell supports to the same extent. And O-X is middleware that connnects to servers like Postgres, Tomcat, postfix, OpenLDAP (all of which are open source, or have swap-in replacement open source alternatives). O-X interoperates with all these apps via standard protocols and data formats, including Outlook, so all the other software we add to the system that uses those standards continues to work.
Novell's arrangement puts Linux into a giant organization, backed by serious support and development. It's the thin edge of a wedge backed by other apps that can further displace Microsoft's hegemony there. Just like all the Linux/Apache servers that mushroomed everywhere in the last 5 years, including HHS no doubt, without a plan, but which reduced the IIS grip on the market to an also-ran. HHS runs its webserver on Windows/IIS today - after this Novell contract is operational, that will probably change. How long after that will Exchange go the way of IIS? And with IT able to just call Novell for support, and Novell sales calling to sell their O-X line, how long will it take for wily HHS geeks to quietly replace Exchange without the suits even noticing? Then, once Novell and Netline have feedback from a huge paying enterprise customer like HHS, and all their vast array of extranet partners, how long before no one notices that the plug has been pulled on IIS for good, except Microsoft and Novell?
--
make install -not war
Novell HQ used to be in Utah, it is now in Waltham MA. The offices in Provo are still present, but all of the executives are in Waltham.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
People like you keep making fun of GNU for trying to get their name and contributions recognized. But companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and others put billions into marketing, trademark enforcement, and other activities to make people aware of their brand.
Like it or not, having a recognizable "brand" is important even for open source projects: it helps their long-term survival and attracts contributions. People do need to remember that "Linux" really is a combination of the Linux kernel and a lot of GNU utilities and software. And the fact that "GNU" is recognized today by many people is not a consequence of huge paid-for marketing campaigns, it really is a grass-roots effort.
Actually, a bit more honesty in this regard would be nice from commercial vendors. People should remember that most of the code in OS X doesn't come from Apple, but from CMU, GNU, BSD, NeXT and Stepstone. And people should remember that Windows has significant chunks of BSD code in it, together with dozens of codebases from other companies purchased by Microsoft. If you remember where the code actually came from, claims of "innovation" by some of these companies appear in a different light.
I think you mean http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=www.hh s.gov [Netcraft]
That wouldn't surprise me, but at NIH we're dealing with a research environment where a lot of folks are already using lots of linux, Solaris, and OS X. I use Suse myself. It will actually be used here as a serious alternative to Microsoft, Apple and Sun, but it won't neccessarily replace anything. Rather it will be complimentary. Folks will use whatever platform best suites their fuctions.
Haha - thanks for the correction. Looks like MS is even more vulnerable than I thought, with their webserver already running on Unix, and IIS nowhere in sight. Now if Netcraft would only start listing other extranet/Internet server platforms than just HTTP...
--
make install -not war
As a long time system programmer/administrator there are two things that have always bugged me about Novell. One, the network file system they use is antique. It has no global namespace, no kerberos authorization, doesn't use an ACL model, doesn't support symlinks, etc. Second, while the directory service might be cool, it isn't useful for anything beyond Novell's own products. There are very few client applications that are written for NDS. You can see NDS as an LDAP server, but if you do that then what is the point of using NDS at all? And, an extended third problem is Novell's architecture has always been to close the administrator out, and put him/her behind a set of pre-written GUI tools that prevent any flexability to the system. You can script, but you've got to use Novells own scripting language.
Off soap box.
Translation: Microsoft hired me to blog here.
Parent wrote: "Everyone - and I mean everyone - knows that the Bush administration would instantly fire the head of ANY cabinet dept that failed to purchase Microsoft software."
Translation: Everyone in the federal government now recognises Microsoft software has fundemental security problems that won't be fixed til longhorn, but we at Microsoft can't admit this.
Parent wrote: 'The current thinking within the administration is that open source software is "unamerican" and "socialist".' Translation: Novell's and American company from a conservative state; while Microsoft is a bunch of Gay supporters. Who do you think the administration likes.
Parent wrote:Everyone here at the DHHS knows that this is just a play to secure a better deal from Microsoft.
Translation: As a microsoft rep (perhaps he works at baystar), the parent poster seems to be offering to bribe a DHHS official with this statement? So sorry, slashdot... this has happened so many times, I really didn't think you'd get suckered again.
Obviously you are lying since the administraton would hardly care which American company an agency signed a contract with.
Now if Gore had won a few years back you might have seen something more like what you are saying since he's more buddy-buddy with Gates. So I guess we dodged a bullet on that one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Note that these guys are under NDA with Microsoft (from my first link: "All will need to sign NDAs cause there are things ... that we don't want to leak out"), so they probably can't even say who they are -- but basically they troll around the various blogs pushing Microsoft fud.
This smells exactly like one of those postings.
I always get a kick out of Slashdotters like YOU who blather on about "fanboys". You are a perfict example of a "fanboy"!
For all those with the "I hated Novell [3-6].x something-or-other", you really should go download Open Enterprise Server and check it out, it's awesome. Everyone seems to be fanboy'ing Novell vs. Micorsoft. I haven't seen a HIPPA post yet. Everyone here should really go read what HIPPA really says. My wife works at a hospital and I've read her training manuals. I have 6 years of Windows Server admin experience, admittidly not a guru but I really don't think that level of security can be pulled off in Windows especially considering some/most hospitals probably don't have honest to god Server and Workstation Gurus to lock stuff down to comply with HIPPA. I could be completely wrong on that, but think about the small office eye doctors and school nurses who are bound by HIPPA too. Who here is willing to admit that their school district is doing everthing right down to the desktop let alone protecting student data. And no one will be able to argue that every every small office practice is going know what they need to do to comply with HIPPA. Most of them probably think it's an acronym for a new treatment or STD.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is fallout from the wonderful UFMS implementation that went live in April. . . which immediately failed going live, thus reverting to their legacy system again.
The big question I'd have is Oracle Applications support on the Novell desktop. . . admittedly I have very little experience with any non-windows based Apps client, but I do know I must use IE in order to run it on my own Windows box.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Has anybody else noticed that the slashdot editors are more and more considering GNOME the standard desktop? This particular story is about a huge deployment of Novell Linux Desktop which is essentially GNOME, but there is no mention of GNOME and no GNOME icon to be seen. It is just taken as given that a Linux desktop deployment would use GNOME, just as it would be taken as a given that a Linux web server deployment would use Apache.
...
Is this a sign that the enterprise Linux desktop is maturing?
Personally, as a GNOME user, I am happy that the DE more focused on usability for newbies and non-geeks is the one becoming the standard choice for deployments. However, I did actually think that people on slashdot (of all places) would still consider KDE at least a contender
GNOME is dead.
e .avi.gz.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2066703/gnome-the-movi
http://rapidshare.de/files/2067142/gnome.zip.html
First and foremost - I love Linux and Sun but they didn't make their moves quick enough in the business world. Sun should have bought RH or SUSE in '98 '99 as well as the Alpha chip. If they had, we would be talking about Sun Linux on the Alpha at blazing speeds. Solaris is great for the big iron/DataCenter and then they would have shored up the mid/low range servers as well with the linux offering but they didn't and now they are wondering what to do.
With that said, M$ has the business desktop realm. Apple and now Novell are great alternatives but not in most business's. We here it over and over again that macro's in word/excel don't work in Openoffice. People use IE because it is loaded and there not Opera or Firefox. So why would people switch. We are too lazy to switch. We go with what is easy. Look at the popular business products and how many really integrate with Novell/Linux. As a CIO, CTO, I don't want to buy a complex product to provide user and group permission between Novell(linux), Windows, Apple, RedHat, HP-UX, Solaris, etc. To hard for my admin's to keep security straight.
Second - This is the gov't. The same gov't that spent 581 million on VCF and dumped it. People get with it. They are going to buy and then replace soon and then say "Look we added jobs, we helped the economy." You shouldn't get excited yet.
Third - If this spreads to another dept, M$ will essentially give away software and somehow make 40 million off this type of deal. Novell can't do that in the long run. M$ could give away OS, Office, for 4 years and not feel a dent. Novell or anyone else except IBM could do the same.
Fourth - Integration people. What happens when they want to integrated with another department at that dept has M$ only. M$ makes it hard to integrate with other folks. Patches and Service packs are a prime example. Guess what, if they beat you, create a patch or sp that breaks them so it doesn't work.
My guess is if HHS doesn't get this in quickly and show the benefits, it will fail and they will go back to M$. Since I worked in Gov't, they don't do anything quickly. Novell has a mountain to climb and hopefully, they have enough energy to get to the top.
I would love to see some form of a Linux desktop overthrow the darkside of M$.
- Out.
"Novell, conversely, has a long history of providing excellent support"
Novell has a long history of running products into the ground and mismanaging itself.
They were late to offer and advertise a Fully "TCPIP" OS from the ground up. IPX was always what they pushed, TCPIP was an addon and afterthought. They forced developers to write NLMs when the world went App server crazy and MS beat the shit out of them for it by offering better developer support. They forced admins to use a shitty not quite unix, not quite DOS shell they blew chucks for too long. And they completely botched their webserver product from a customer standpoint. Yea you remember that whole Internet Boom right? Ever wonder why Novell sat that one out? Finally they were at a standstill from Netware 4.x to 5.x while the rest of the world went to NT and Microsoft.
So while its fun to Troll Red Hat(nice work btw) realize that those of us that have been around the block a few times don't have the blind faith that you do that Novell will do well OSS offerings.
They do have a good sales channel and there are still some big companies that will only run Netware. But don't think that guarantee's them success just because they've been around and have good contacts. Before they went OSS they were not even making tech headlines anymore.
And btw you obivous hoping that Red Hat fails is a pretty shitty attitude to have against a company that has done so much for the GPL and OSS. You should be hoping that both Novell and Red Hat do well and kick Microsoft's ass. If Red Hat goes down it would NOT be a good thing for OSS in general.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Fascinating, I wonder why Microsoft hires students (other than the brainwashing they can do) when they can hire more professional trolls like Enderle and MoG to do it in more public forums.
Also, they have 35-40,000 employees. Just set them all up with blogs and flog them every time they mention the word "Linux" (except in FUD terms). Since Ballmer would write the blog text himself, they'd never have to worry about "leaks" such as the memo that said UNIX was better than their stuff.
I guess Microsoft is inefficient even in propaganda.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Is it profitable?
While it can be said that the costs of usage in the corporate workplace of Linux is less than other environments, it can also be said the support costs are higher. The relevant quote in this case: "unlimited access, upgrade protection and technical support". While seemingly a good thing for bolstering Linux in this market, who knows in the end if that will cost Novell more than they can handle, and thereby discourage other vendors in this market from the kind of aggressive marketing they should be engaging in if they wish to expand.
This argument seems good at first, because we all know that linux is difficult to use, right? Why is linux difficult to use? Personally, I put the blame squarely on hardware manufacturers. The only reason people think linux is "hard" is because their sound card wont work right away, or their video card wont work right away. However, in this case, linux WILL work right away. The desktop users will only see the overly-friendly gnome or kde desktop. Is that really that difficult? Do you really think they're going to get more support requests because they're using Evolution instead of Outlook?
Also, this is a bussiness environment. Usually employees only need to access a few certain programs, and they have their own training for those programs.
Also, what happens when a computer breaks in a business environment? Where I work, it usually happens like this:
1. Computer gets infected with spyware, desktop is completely unusable, when you run IE it says "Do you want to want FREE MOVIES!!!" and 5 ads pop up.
2. Employees avoid that workstation for a while.
3. Eventually, the local tech person reinstalls the OS. This is usually fine since most files are kept on a network drive.
And these scenarios dont even involve support costs.
So when is Novell going to be spending its support resources? Probably only on specific bugs in Novell software that people have problems with.
I think Novell's Linux desktop support costs will most likely be LESS than Microsofts.
I remember when MS announced AD. At that time, Novell owned the market with NDS. Cool. But Novell then offered it for free on MS and charged on everything else. IOW, they pushed MS everywhere to gain a few bucks which allowed MS time.
When this happened, there was a poster over a Linuxtoday saying how this would help linux (Novell was going to port to Linux a NDS client and charge top dollars for it). After saying the above, s?he went on the warpath and told me that I had no clue about marketing and that Novell would remain head and shoulder above MS. IOW, a Novell marketer. and they are exactly where they deserve to be for that choice.
I am hopeful that they are now on the right path, but it is a hard one to stick to esp. considering where their stock is.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then the AD juggernaut came in, along with other IT mandates such as moving database services to Oracle, regardless of what you were using before (which was one of those "unfunded mandate" type of things).
HHS, and NIH in particular, are caught up in a cost cutting problem. They've been centralizing a lot of the IT functionality, farming more work out to contractors, and in some ways making a lot of really poor decisions.
NIH has scientific work to do. And a lot of it. There is little wiggle room for a lot of the labs to have decent IT budgets when they have science to get done. Science used to happen on big Unix boxes, Suns and SGIs, and the budget for these types of systems has dried up. Many of the programs ended up on Mac. Some of them are more naturally now on Linux.
So some ICs have already moved a lot of processing to Linux. The big challenge for HHS and NIH going forward is to get Linux admins in there that know what the hell they're doing. A year ago you couldn't get a tech at the NIH helpdesk who knew how to get the VPN client installed on a linux box.
So this is a good thing, overall. But NIH in particular, and HHS to a lesser degree, has been a technical rogue in the government for a while. They have work to do, and many of the scientists aren't interested in working with systems that don't do what they need. The migration to Exchange server was painful. The introduction of an AD-linked single signon system for web sites was begun in a total vacuum and made for a lot of headaches for a lot of people because the product they chose was weak.
Scientific directors don't have time or interest in forcing their scientists to use products that don't work just because someone higher up said so. It's one of the best parts of working with and for scientists. Hopefully they'll be able to put this all together in a way that is cost effective and beneficial, and gets a lot of really cool work done using linux.
--mandi
"Mike Leavitt is the new secretary for HHS,
appointed by Bush. (He used to be at EPA)."
Hard to say which of these two agencies gets the least attention and money from an ultra-conservative right wing administration...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think you are being a little naïve. That web sit is just the root. If you click on the Netblock owner (National Institutes of Health) link you'll see all the websites HHS runs. Not only are there are many MS servers there are also many Linux and Solaris as well. http://toolbar.netcraft.com/netblock?q=NIHNET-2,13 7.187.0.0,137.187.255.255
No, I'm not being naive. When I saw the Netcraft listing that I erroneously cited, I wasn't surprised to see it running Windows, so I allowed myself to post the mistake. But upon correction, seeing its root webserver on Solaris/Netscape, I commented only that MS isn't as prevalent as I thought, when looking at the erroneous Netcraft entry. This isn't an "all or nothing" game, as I pointed out in my original post. It's a question of momentum, and openings for new momentum.
--
make install -not war
Novell isn't pursuing distribution of F/OSS as a patentable revenue stream. Sony was out to do their thing with Betamax both because it was a better product, but more crucially, it wasn't interoperable with other systems. If you bought Betamax anything, that money went to Sony and locked others out of the market.
:)
Novell, by contrast, is not just bound to a revenue stream solely in product sales. They can offer services above and beyond the software box that is truly what makes this profitable, as support has little if any consumable or R&D costs associated with it.
Am I even close?
What is of great interest, however, is the future for a lot of govermental departments. The FDA/HHS for example, is primarily 50+ age bracket, with a serious dearth of young government employees coming up through the ranks.
This might lead to an interesting inversion in the near future (say, 5-10 years) where contractors begin to outnumber real government employees.
As a completely off-topic aside (as if we weren't there already) - I've always been of the opinion that when you reach a certain level within the gov't (right around G-14) all you've proven is you're a weasely bastard adept at passing the buck. Obviously YMMV but that's pretty much my approach when dealing with any sort of higher-up within government organizations when I'm on gov't projects. (which I am attempting to avoid like the plague in the first place)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
This NIH support page shows they're definately using Outlook on Win2k. Perhaps they're going to opt going to Suse/OpenExchange/NLD instead of the XP/2k3 upgrade?
I'd be interested to see which departments/agencies under NIH opt to go with SuSe/OpenExchange first and why, besides the obvious licensing savings.
Moof.
...not what you know.
Novell kicks ass, but it still takes good connections to get even great products sold into large enterprises.
Novell > Utah > (former)Gov. Mike Leavitt > Now Secretary of HHS.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
From my experience, Novell Linux Desktop 9 is buggy, and support is worth nothing.
The product lacks a lot of packages which are really needed (pam_mount for example is a must if you want to connect your business users to their network shares, there's no (k)vpnc,...), also multimedia support is below par (xine was stripped from the open source WMA and WMV ffmpeg decoders, there's only MP3 support in RealPlayer, no usable multimedia plug-in for Firefox, like mplayerplug-in).
And worst of all, the product still contains a lot of visible bugs, even now at this moment, six months after its original release. To name a few: the use of dead keys hang KDE applications such as Konqueror, KDEs file chooser does not use the correct charset when your locale is ISO-8859-*, USB Mass Storage Devices with FAT partitions are mounted UTF-8, making all file names with special characters written in windows garbled and the file system case sensitive, i18n support is much worse than other distro's (with latest OOo security upgrade, even several languages which were only added in Novells SP1, were removed again, according to support, because the community has not finished translation, which is simply not true, as the translation was just fine), RealPlayer starts copying all files in your homedir to a temporary subdirectory if you start it from the KDE menu because of a bug in RealPlayers launch script, CIFS has problems saving files with apostroph in the name, while SMBFS, which is not officially supported by NLD, works fine,...
On several of these issues, support has confirmed that there is indeed a problem, but there are no bug fixes more than a month after my reports, neither do I have any news wether these bugs actually will be fixed.
I'll be looking to Centos in the future, at least it won't cost anything, and will also have years of updates. With KDE 3.3, it will also solve some of the small issues related to the older KDE 3.2 in NLD, and hopefully it will also be a bit less buggy in general.
I really have the feeling that Novell has rushed out this distro to become the first one before RHEL4 and MDK Corporate 3. I cannot understand why the reviewer has such a positive review about the distro.
No government agency can support evolution now...
I know this thread is now dead (being all of 10 hours old) but I thought I should add the following.
It should be noted that the Sec. of HHS is (former Utah governor) Mike Leavitt and Novell is a Utah corporation. If you are Novell, it's nice to have friends in high places.
I gotta laugh at this. While the US health service look at Novell the UK's NHS signed a contract with M$ not that long ago.
So the question is, is the HHS trying to do what the NHS did by having a open source pilot scheme to force M$ into better licencing terms ?
I'd have to laugh if in a year or two's time NHS is all M$ (closed source) and the HHS is all open source (linux / unix)
Given that Orren Boyle has three times as many furnaces as Henry Rearden, for each $1,000 that the government spends on Rearden Metal, it should give $3,000 to Orren Boyle.
Perhaps we should not have an HHS. But as long as we do, it should not be "market neutral", but rather use the best product for its purposes. The government would be locking in a market leader simply because it led at this time, not because it deserves its lead.
Also, the money that Novell gets is not pure profit, as Novell has to provide goods and services. Microsoft would just get free money (talk about socialism!).
This is an odd nit-pick, and it might just be a region dependent (I'm in Washington) thing, but I have worked for the DHHS (Specifically the DDD), and employee or otherwise, EVERYONE I know says DHHS not HHS, and It's abbreviated DHHS in all the material I had for the job. The Website is even www.dhhs.gov
Do people in other parts of the country refer to the "OD", "HS", "OE" Or the friggen' "OT"? Because everyone I know says DOD (Department of Defense), DHS (Department of Homeland Security), DOE (Department of Energy) and DOT (Department of Transportation). The Department of Education is the "ED" and Treasury is just the "Treasury Department" to avoid acronym overlap, but NONE of them omit the word "department".
Granted, the Department of Veterans Affairs is just the "VA" because it used to be just the "Veterans Administration" not the "Department of VA".
The only real exception is "HUD" for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but only because it became an adjective, IE "HUD project", and because you can say "hud" as a word (people don't say "H-U-D"). Plus, "DHUD" sounds too close to "dud", which is a bad connotation for a gov office, so HUD is the standard, and they use www.hud.gov instead of www.dhud.gov.
HHS sounds like some new instruction set for x86 cips, "Now with MMX, SSE3 and HHS! you'll be downloading and running viruses faster than ever before!11ONE!ELEVEN!!1)"
/By the way, working for the DDD was one of the most rewarding things I have done. Working with the disabled gave me a better perspective on my life than anything I learned or read in school
//Little tipsy from supper wine, so forgive the spelling.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
Trolling RedHat? Naw, I wasn't doing that. In fact, I've been around the block more than a few times since I started supporting NetWare with version 2.15.
You are correct about Novell's history - there were a lot of missteps. I supported NetWare installations for over 12 years before joining Novell. That's right, I (and am the same person who wrote the grandparent post) work for them, and have for almost 3 years now. So it ain't blind faith, it's hard work that I do to do my part to ensure we don't make the same damn mistakes again.
Noorda made the first real mistake in Novell's history - trying to compete head-to-head with Microsoft. Dumb move - to get noticed by Microsoft at that time as a threat when the business depended so much on Windows' success. Then we had the MUP.SYS fiasco, where Microsoft fucked over everyone's network clients except theirs to make the competition (and Novell was the major competition at the time) look like a poor performer. It worked; Novell lost market share in large part because of that (not that they didn't do stupid things on their own), something that has now been proven and was part of Eric Schmidt's deposition in the MS antitrust trial.
And yes, I have a copy of the Novell Webserver product as well down in the basement - and yes, it was awful. Writing CGI for a webserver was never so painful. Now it's Apache and Tomcat being used. Can't fix the problems from the past, but we sure as hell can learned from them. In fact, we have learned from a lot of them, but the learning's not done yet.
I think it's inherently stupid for anyone who works for Novell to think that the history is without fault. Anyone who works for the company who thinks that the company cannot or has never done any wrong should get out NOW so those of us who choose to learn from the mistakes of the past (Wordperfect, anyone?) can make things right.
BTW, I hope RedHat is successful (perhaps I didn't say that before), but I hope Novell/SuSE are more successful. RedHat customers are flocking to Novell because they are fed up with the support policies. Novell ain't in a position to fix RedHat's problems, only to learn from them. But if they do go the way of the dodo, I'm sure that we'd love to hire some of their very talented people - those peoples' contributions to the GPL, OSS, and Linux in general are quite impressive.
RedHat Enterprise Server has been a supported platform for eDirectory for a long time - and we have many customers who use those platforms.
I'd say the future looks pretty bright for Novell; when I started, I got stock at $2.40 a share or something like that. Now it's up to 6.20-something, not a bad profit for me. Yes it used to be at $40 years and years ago (and I work with lots of folks who bemoan the fact that they may never make their money back - I'd rather they worked to increase the share value myself, because stock at $40 with a purchase price of $2.40 is quite a profit).
Of course, because I work there, I have to believe the future is bright - otherwise, I'm working for the wrong company. <laughs>
I always find it is good to propitiate Fortuna, actually!
Not Free SF Reader