Novell Missteps Not Affecting SuSE

OSS_ilation writes "Analysts and users agree -- if the layoff rumors at Novell prove true sometime soon, SuSE Linux has nothing to fear. Over at SearchOpenSource.com the word is that the popular SuSE Linux operating system has both the community support and technical chops to weather any personnel-related storms that may be lingering on the horizon. However, the point is also made that should Novell go south, there are those who believe SuSE could prove to be an appealing acquisition target."

Comments

NoveGPL

[Doc Ruby]

A much more plausible option for Novell is to factor out redundancy in their products in favor of their OSS. And to convert more of their products into OSS, either by publishing the source, or by phasing them out in favor of supporting, maybe even buying, their OSS competition. If the market thinks their OSS divisions are worth buying, it will think Novell is even better suited to keep them, if its overall strategy is consistent (and they market that strategy correctly). Novell made its empire making DOS network, almost lost it to NT's "network OS" PR, kept it by making Win32 network to old Novell standards, and generally is known for making others OSes interoperate. Novell should see the light and make the jump. They could ride the Linux tide to do what MS did with PC desktop/LANs, without that nasty (and cyclic) vendor lockin.

Re:NoveGPL

[man_of_mr_e]

Ximian's products were already open source when they bought them.

That purchase is still kind of a mystery to me, since they've not really leveraged the products much. It's good they're giving the Ximian guys a salary, but what's it doing for Novell?

Yes, Novell have plenty of cash in the bank

[DiamondGeezer]

...but that just makes them an acquisition target. I'm still not sure that Novell's shareholders won't get together and fire the board (Jack Messman and all) before an acquiring vehicle (and it could be a VC-led consortium) does it anyway.

It takes real genius to fail to meet the market in the way Novell has, but Novell has so many failed strategies, failed relaunches, failed products that never quite delivered, that it amounts to a sort of genius.

It has too many consultants, but more importantly far too many managerial layers to ever be nimble. Novell corporately is sclerotic, and its upper management is utterly remote from the cutting edge.

SuSE wasn't making money before the acquisition, and SuSE Linux needs more corporate sponsors.

Perhaps Google should buy SuSE Linux - I'm sure Eric Schmidt would like the irony.

Novell still ha a very good marketshare...

[bubulubugoth]

Outside Usa...

Also, and more importantly, those clients are used to pay. So, the SuSe offering of novell, with the tools used by novell admins, is cheaper, then they will maintain, and grouth their market share.

Also, Microsof pricing as a Network Operating System, is way more expensive than Novell offerings, and for example, a iDirectory with Identity Manager, are good solutions, and their OpenSource counterpart, needs a LOT of time to implement it correctly, lot of hack and slash, and Novell provides clients from windows/linux/mac...

So, big & medium size co, searching for a cheaper infrastructure, and wanting to still have somebody to sue, and have WorldWide support, then Novell SuSe is the way to go...

Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters...

[Anonymous Coward]

mono is the only one? are you kidding? you should really try using google more.
theres a crapload of c# compilers out there.
Gnu's portable dot net had a working windows.forms library way before mono did.
http://www.dotgnu.org/

Zenworks

[Anonymous Coward]

Zenworks is such a killer product that alone should be reason enough to stay or switch back to Novell. With Zenworks we are able to manage over 2500 computers with two that's right two administrators.

Re:Zenworks

[petermgreen]

they use it for the public machines at the university of manchester (most machines with only a single user are generally not centrally managed at least in the department i'm in)

PROS:
you can use most (there are a few exceptions for licensing reasons but most stuff is either free, site licesed, or licensed on a concurrent user basis using licenseing servers) of your departmental applications anywhere on campus

software can be added reasonablly quickly

the same image can be used throughout the whole university in both departmental and public clusters.

CONS:
The login times are long due to the extreme size of the zenworks tree, on some of the slower machines/networks (both machine speed and net speed seem to affect login times) the login time can be as much as 5 minuites.

the university puts a LOT of man hours into creating the annual images (they are well done though theese guys know how to keep the system secure without resorting to cripling the user interface like so many other places i've been do) and the packages

some application objects take a long time to deploy. This seems to be made worse by a braindead virus scanner setup (is there really any need to scan stuff thats being downloaded from your main deployment servers?!). For others they try to run too much over network shares with resulting poor performance of the app.

P.S. our departmental cluster now seems to be making a clever use of lilos boot configuration once feature to allow them to re-image machines on the next boot (the linux based zenworks imaging system boots first and then runs lilo to tell it to boot windows once and reboots the pc).

Stable OS != Stable company

[u2pa]

I've run novell netware servers for 9 years, and literaly NEVER had it crash. And after power outages, its never failed to come right back up online. Its the only OS i have ever run that have never given me Guru Meditation/kernel panic / BSOD / filesystem corruption. (and the opposite is just as true Stable company != Stable OS... just think of Windows)

Re:Novell still has cash

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "a biiilllllion dollars!" Spread that over umpteen employees, marketing, paying the rent, taxes, health care ... it's not an infinite amount of money. Companies need revenue.

Look at who the majority stakeholder in SuSE Linux is though (*cough*IBM*cough*), and it should be clear that SuSE doesn't have a lot to worry about.

Redhat might.

Then again, judging by how poorly IBM execs understand the underpinnings of the F/OSS movement, IBM might just bury SuSE. It's not like they don't know how to bury promising OS technology. I just sat through an unbearable IBM so-called open source sales pitch a couple of hours ago. Distilled version: "we'd like to get you started on the crappy free stuff, so you'll learn skills that will translate into a need for our bigger proprietary stuff". E.g. use Derby (big name in open source databases, you know) in a LAMP application (yes I know that doesn't make sense, but that was the pitch). Then when you need to upgrade, IBM can help you with WebSphere. After you've set up this big complicated mess, I'm sure IBM would be happy to assist you with training and consulting services also. Bleh.

Mono is ho-hum. Hula really matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is not innovative. Mono is just a misguided open source implementation of proprietary crap.

Hula (another Novell incubator project) is innovative. Hula implements integrated open standards based calendaring, scheduling, email etc. Hula doesn't copy MS API's; Hula, should it succeed, could overshadow Exchange in the collaboration software arena. To date, Exchange has had no real competition. But imagine what standards based collaboration would mean. It would be analogous to HTTP/HTML on the web, or SMTP/IMAP for email. Exchange lets you collaborate with other people in using the same Exchange server. Open standards for collaboration could allow you keep in sync with stuff going on all over the damn place. Keep in sync with your family, friends, work, community, business relationships, your kid's school, whatever. Think about it.

Bury Exchange. Long live (the bright lights at) Novell.