Novell Returns to the SUSE Name

soren42 writes "It appears that Novell has decided to rename their enterprise desktop line SUSE, once again. According to an announcement at CeBIT, Novell will be releasing the next version of their desktop product under the name SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop - ditching the moniker Novell Linux Desktop. Naming aside, it looks like the features will be there to make it a strong desktop competitor."

Comments

Good idea

[parasonic]

From my experiences, I've noticed that it's never a good idea to change the name of a well-known product unless you have a GOOD grip on the market where people are forced to remember/figure out the new naming. Otherwise, a lot of times, mass confusion occurs when something's name is changed, and customers go and try to find another product because they haven't been told that the name changed and assume that it disappeared (or think that something else might change).

Props to Novell. This was the right move.

Some screenshots

[Zaitor]

http://scr3.golem.de/?d=0603/Novell_Next_Generatio n_Desktop&a=43914

Re:Name matters

[mtenhagen]

In my mind an image popups of of powerfull, reliable and secure software. Not the best looking but something you can build your business on.

With SUSE I think about some guys who decide to package a bunch of free software.

I think most of the "older" IT decision makers still remember the old novell software as being pretty stable.

Re:turn off the lights

[wclacy]

Most Government agencies have not switched from Novell products because Novell products Work better and cost less.

What do most Government agencies use Novell products for? Most use mainly File and Print Servers as well as Novells Directory.
Novell has the Best File Server, The best Print Server, and the Best Directory of any Company and any product!
Many of their other Products could also be considered better than the rest.
ZenWorks is much better than Microsofts SMS! What do you want people to switch to? Microsoft?

The company I work for is in the process of switching over to Microsoft for File and print.
We are switching from Netware 5/6 servers to a Windows 2003 Cluster.

For this switch my company has paid millions to Microsoft and in the end we are going to have less functionality and it will take more time to manage than what we could do with Novell 10 years ago!!!

The reason that Microsoft can sell it's product is because they make their pitch to the CIO of a company, and tell the non technical CIO how much money he will save. (They don't tell him about the increased down time and increased time to manage and patch. Or the hundreds of thousand of dollars he will have to pay to 3rd party software venders just to make the crap work.)

I have talked to some IS staff at various places and have heard the same story from all of them:
Microsoft came and talked to the CIO and gave him a deal on Microsoft products, But Only if they agreed not to renew thier contract with Novell.
In most cases they were willing to give them Microsoft software to replace their Novell software for pennies on the dollar. Microsoft looses nothing since they were already getting the same amount of money for Windows and office. But now they are able to use their Monopoly on the desktop to try and push Novell out of business.

I have been supporting Netware, windows, Linux, and Unix since the early 1990s and I have not found anything that works as good as Novell's products.

Take a look...

[soren42]

There's official Novell screenshots (a nice sneak preview) online at http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/preview.htm l.

Re:To be expected.

[LardBrattish]

Red Hat's method (Red Hat for the Enterprise, Fedora Core for the Real Users) is acceptable, though certainly not brilliant.

That's a marketing disaster for Red Hat IMHO.

They had the undisputed #1 dominant brand & split off the goodwill generating bit and forced most of their loyal users to switch to a different distro and - get this - the users figured there were OTHER non Red Hat Linux distros and - shock horror - some of them did stuff better than Red Hat.

Brilliant move morons. 5 years ago Red Hat was the shoo in no brainer distro for servers everywhere. Today Suse is the preferred supplier to the NSW govt.