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

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.

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

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

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.