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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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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)
Just as soon as the 'unlimited' tech support comes into play I would expect. No matter the system, support tends to such, and with no limits, there's no limit to how much it will suck.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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?
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
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.
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?
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
"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
Don't be.
The Best Buy in Lincoln has been offereing the latest versions of SUSE for several years.
In 2002 I purchased SUSE 6.4 from Best Buy, for my employer, to put up a Linux server for phone download of tax return results, because the Win98 + WildCat BBS "solution" kept falling over and the MSCEs were getting tired of coming in on evenings and weekends to reboot the box. In 36 months of 24/7 operation the Linux solution, which was SUSE 6.4 with one bash script and two Python scripts each less than a page long, never crashed once and never lost a call.
Win98+WildCat TCO: $500+ for software, and about 1,000 hours of MSCE time rebooting, reinstalling, and rebuilding the Windows solution. It had to have new Pentium 3 (iirc), 512MB RAM and two 8GB hds.
Linux TCO: $38 for software and 24 hours of my time to write the scripts and test them. I had never written a Python script before that. The MSCEs gave me one of their oldest boxes, a P75 with 64MB RAM and two 1GB hds.
When asked what she thought about the KDE desktop the person who did the file maintenance said it was no different from using Win95. Her re-training costs were $0.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
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.
It's been done for Linux and was reported here on Slashdot. As I recall, GNU was the biggest component in terms of LOC, even bigger than the kernel.
More importantly, however, GNU is essential: without the GNU compiler and the GNU command line utilities, Linux wouldn't run; there simply are no substitutes.
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?