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The Differences Between Red Hat and Novell
Tiberius_Fel writes "A former Novell employee has done a comparison at InfoWorld, reflecting on the business practices of Red Hat and Novell. They focus on such areas as customers, culture, and partners." From the article: "Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear ... This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way."
It must be a slow news day. It's a short article with not much analysis. It is good to see an article comparing the business practices of Linux Vendor vs Linux Vendor compared to the usual Linux Vendor vs Microsoft we usually get.
This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way.
Yes... that's because Novell has woken up and realised that just because a company is pro-OSS it doesn't make them good. Hopefully IBM will figure it out soon.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
> Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the
> market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear
Like every other company out there that is a for-profit. try getting freebies from anyone else or get them to do work for you that isnt going to earn them money. by by see the door.
"If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear"
they make that sound like a bad thing, there aren't many for profit organisations that are any different i would imagine.
Redhat is where it is because it is the company that employs the people who write Linux, most notably Alan Cox. There is a lot of code in the Linux kernel and periphery that simply wouldn't be there if Redhat wasn't around to pay these programmers to put it in there.
So if we consider the authors of the source as the ultimate support channel, then Redhat will always filter its way to the top. Throw in the existing momentum behind the platform, both on the "child" distros side and the business side, and you've got an unstoppable (for now) juggernaut. Want embedded Linux? Montavista's got a custom RedHat Linux for you. Want some esoteric hardware supported? Redhat's gone through the trouble to port a driver for you.
It's so far ahead of every other commercial distribution that it's not even funny.
Is it ahead/better than non-commercial distros like Debian? No, probably not. But they aren't really competing against each other.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
>> If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear
Hmm, maybe it's time to invest in RHAT.
This is what needs to be done if Linux is ever going to take over as the "Main Stream" OS. Novell needs to leave the server stuff alone, RedHat has got linux on the server down to a science. What Novell needs to do, is take what it has in SUSE, and work on getting more linux on desktop users machines. If both companys would realise this, and work on it, it would pose a VERY big threat to Microsoft, and push Linux as the mainstream os.
~Alan
Yes... that's because Novell has woken up and realised that just because a company is pro-OSS it doesn't make them good. Hopefully IBM will figure it out soon.
I agree, the thing is that if you factor in good buisness practices that actually work better all round for the customers and buisness. For instance if I was a Red hat customer and they chose to disgard me before I made any real money, then I went to another company who were more endearing and offered better customer support, who would be losing out? Red hat.
And as for changing over to the SuSe core, I would say Novell made a good choice, I like the direction Novell is going in, they are doing well.
#!/bin/bash
login root
chmod 775 universe://
Many people have replied saying that it's okay or normal for a for profit organization to care about money the way Red-Hat is accused to be doing.
I have never dealt with Red-Hat in that way, so I won't judge Red-Hat.
But speaking in general, no it is not okay.
Organizations are members of our society, globla orgnizations are members of the global community.
The same way, its not okay for a person to only care about money, it's not okay for an organization to be all about money.
Being NICE, is a good reputation, treating your smallest client the same as the biggest, is NICE, and we should encourage all organizations to do it, because that way we will be living in a NICE society
I can elaborate on this for ever, but for most people I think the point is clear the worst thing that happens to some organization is when they become bigger than their clients, and start to treat them as inferior entities
The Red Hat/Novell heavyweight competition benefits everyone.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Partners are needed for having a good sustainable bussines ecosystem.
There is the need of a supply chain. And Novell has a much more longer experience than Redhat, it also has a long standing user base around the world, there still are a lot of novell 486/3.11/4.0 running, 5 to 10 users, and not wanting to go with Microsoft.
Novell and SuSe, also spend lots of money at developing OSS, ximian, mono, X, drivers, kernel patches, kde and gnome stuff, also redhat.
And even more... SuSe born in germany, and it has a huge user base at europe, Redhat has born at U.S.A. and there is a LOT of countries, that doesnt want to be working with U.S.A. enforsable companies... so there is the reason why, at Linux there will be very, very, very hard to have a "single vender Enterprise distribution"...
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As a developer & user, Red Hat needs to tighten up on their edge releases (FC4 and it's migration to EL for instance). FC4 maybe used by more folks out there, but it's too klunky for the application developer market and less stable that OpenSuSE. And app-development is where the real cash is made.
Novell, aside from focusing on a couple of markets only needs to increase [kernel] performance as SuSE (and openSuSE) are much more polished for a enterprise environment that RH. I find that application development is much easier on SuSE where kernel dev is easier on FC4. I picked out the F/OSS projects only because companies are moving to the model of developing against the 'F/OSS' version and then deploying on the paid 'OSS' version, hence delaying the licensing/service purchase. It makes sense since if forces the developer and vendor share the risks and have mutual interests to succeed.
Matt Asay the author of this article will speak at SCALE 4x this year. SCALE will be held in Los Angeles on Feb 11-12, 2006.
This is just a delicate way of saying that Novell has vested too much in R&D. So sacrifice R&D to follow technologies that are already showning wide adoption. Novell has taken the lead in introducing now popular technologies like directory services, but has had trouble keeping marketshare. Why is that? Did R&D prevent prevent Novell's customers from getting something their competitors had? What is that exactly?
It sounds to me like Novell is going the way of HP, but I hope they continue to make R&D enough of a priority.
...between RedHat and Novell is that they are two separate companies. That means they are not the same. They are two, not one. They are run by different people. With different views on lots of issues. With different products. Yes, they have something in common, they have linux-based OSes to sell. Apart from that, I can't see anything else they would have in common. What's such an article good for, then ? Well, in any case, it's better than another dupe, I guess.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
IBM aren't doing OSS just to get a lot of geeks to like them.
When all of their administration tools (Zenworks in particular), it makes for a fantastic management environment. Their linux stuff isn't quite up to par with their windows desktop integration yet, but it is getting there. These things are much more useful in a corporate environmnet.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
This is just a delicate way of saying that Novell has vested too much in R&D. So sacrifice R&D to follow technologies that are already showning wide adoption. Novell has taken the lead in introducing now popular technologies like directory services, but has had trouble keeping marketshare. Why is that? Did R&D prevent prevent Novell's customers from getting something their competitors had? What is that exactly? It sounds to me like Novell is going the way of HP, but I hope they continue to make R&D enough of a priority.
It is a sad fact of life that possessing the best product in a marketplace is just a small fraction of the recipe for marketplace leadership.
So many other things are required for success: Marketing, execution [mind-numbing-ly boring stuff like making sure the trains run on time], the correctness of the underlying business model, plain old-fashioned good luck [like being in the right place at the right time]...
Very often, all you need is a minimally adequate product; after that, things like the business model, the execution of the business model, the marketing, and luck [good or bad] tend to prevail.