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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."
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?
"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?
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make install -not war
Err, this is FUD I believe. The network file system they use? Which filesystem would this be - nfs? smb? or are you talking about the older netware stuff? Modern Netware and SLES are as flexible network-wise as any other OS I've used. NDS as an LDAP server - integrated eDirectory configuration tools (i.e. ConsoleOne) that allow you to enumerate your authentication server out as an LDAP tree for legacy programs. Not every OS has support for eDirectory - or ActiveDirectory - but eDirectory is damn near standards compliant for LDAP. Good luck acheiving this with ADS. Pre-written GUI tools? I don't have words for the lunacy of this statement. EVERY OS IN THE WORLD SHIPS WITH PRE-WRITTEN GUI TOOLS. Novell's own scripting language does suck. But since Netware 6 (at least) they've been shipping Perl. Now I know perl is not flexible or easy to use.. wait.. I'll just shutup now.