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."

Comments

No surprise

[RocketRainbow]

Why is Novell so underrated? Their stuff works and it's the only consistently supported software around!

Re:No surprise

[malraid]

underrated? well i would say that novell's business strategy is

1- Create kick ass top of the line technology
2- Hide it as best as possible from customers
3- ????

Hopefully they're making some changes now. I still stand by my opinion that their directory and desktop management software is by far the best in the industry

Re:No surprise

[hey!]

Why is Novell so underrated? Their stuff works and it's the only consistently supported software around!

Well, simple,really.

Novell:Network::Apple:Desktop.

That is to say the solution everybody knows is better, but which can't overcome the inertia of the market. I literally knew Mac/Novell shops in the 1990s who were extremely happy with the choice, but decided to switch to Microsoft all around despite the fact they thought they had both higher productivity and lower TCO under the status quo. Talk about a Microsoft Tax!. They felt, however, Microsoft was an unstoppable juggernaut that would in the next several years obliterate Apple and Novell.

Well, guess, what? It didn't happen.

There's one B-school paradigm that looms large in people's minds, that needs to be rebutted; it's basically the paradigm for making decisions to go with inferior products: The VHS/Beta scenario. Superior quality has almost become a stigma.

So, for extra credit, show this:

not(Novell:Microsoft::Beta:VHS)

Re:No surprise

[hey!]

2- Hide it as best as possible from customers

Doesn't seem to me that they're hiding anything. They advertise nationally, both in the general media and in the trades,and have been all along. What would you do differently?

The problem is, the public wasn't buying Novell's message.

I think during the years of Novell's fall from being the leading network OS vendor, Microsoft had an unbeatable market position: we're thes convenient and safe vendor. Look how easy and spiffy our management GUI is, you can hired trained monkeys to admin your network and save a bundle. And you have to depend on us for everything else anyway, so there's no real risk. People assess risk by the information that is most conveniently at hand, which in this case was everybody else speculating how long it would take Novell to become Micrsoft roadkill. Knowledge of the risks posed by your network being run by trained monkeys driving a Ford Pinto with a glitzy paint job? Well, let's just say experience is the best teacher.

Novell's market position was a tougher sell: they produced for skilled network admins the equivalent of industrial machine tools for the skilled mechanic. And they were just about as glamorous. Of course, now things are different. If I were runnign Novell's marketing, my message would be the equivalent of saying, we're like your old steady girl friend you left for a hottie who turned out to secretly be a psychotic bitch. And by the way, we've been spending a lot of time in the gym, and your friends have been noticing.

I wonder....

[Crimson Dragon]

When it comes to large institutions and licensing with Linux vendors, a number of important questions are raised.

1. 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.
2. The way in which this agreement is done could harm Linux in this environment overall.
   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.

Just some thoughts.... I could be wrong.

Lesser of many evils

[fruitbane]

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.

Technical support boundaries

[LiquidCoooled]

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" ?

I work at HHS

[Ranhert]

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.

GNU/HHS

[rice_burners_suck]

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

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).

Novell to make Linux mature

[shane2uunet]

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 is Good News...

[pschmied]

...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

Real life "Dilbert" quotes from Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks. (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, WA.)

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)

They already signed the deal

[nystul555]

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?

Re:A little surprise

[deanoaz]

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

Parent Is A Troll

[WombatControl]

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.

What about the Novell Client

[bogaboga]

I wonder whether this will make Novell release a Novell Client for Linux which is as functional as its Windows counterpart.

This is one major problem I see with Novell and it also paints a bad picture. Why won't Novell do this noble thing?

Vendor Unlock

[Doc Ruby]

"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?

Re:Novell Linux Desktop at Best Buy

[Jerry]

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.

Re:Why is Novell being pushed?

[PDXNerd]

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.