Red Hat Not Seeing Microsoft, Ubuntu as Threats

Ian Price writes "Red Hat is shrugging off Microsoft's entry into the cluster computing space after Microsoft announced that it has completed the code for its Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 targeting high-performance computing. From the article: 'Scott Crenshaw, general manager of enterprise Linux platform at Red Hat, dismissed Microsoft's entry into cluster computing. "They're playing catch-up," he said. "Linux is often associated with high-performance computing, but Windows has never achieved that on a large scale."' Crenshaw also commented with respect to Ubuntu: 'Their user base is still small, so we're not seeing the impact of it [Ubuntu] so far.'"

Comments

Famous last words

[HeavensBlade23]

I think Netscape was quoted as saying something similar shortly before Internet Explorer utterly destroyed their marketshare. If nothing else, don't underestimate Microsoft's ability to leverage their monopoly into new markets.

Just like MS

[Umbral Blot]

'Their user base is still small, so we're not seeing the impact of it [Ubuntu] so far.'

I am sure Microsoft said the same thing about Red Hat. Pride goes before a fall Red Hat.

Re:Just like MS

[afaik_ianal]

Mind you, the article title is a bit misleading. They said they are not seeing the impact of Ubuntu yet. They didn't say that they do not see them as threats.

Red Hat doesn't need to do much.

[tapo]

I remember when tech websites were clamoring over the latest Fedora release as much as they're clamoring over Ubuntu now. Red Hat almost got it right, except for one thing.

Fix your package manager!

I am sick of downloading packages from weird websites, version conflicts, and typing this stupid and overly long command into the shell over and over, hoping - nay, praying - that RPM won't spit out another conflict error this time. YUM seems tacked on, and I've never gotten it to work properly.

I switched to Ubuntu, even though it had less polish and was so deep in development, simply because application management actually worked, and things were in a logical order (supported, unsupported, universe, multiverse).

Maybe it's not practical, maybe I'm talking out of my ass having not used a Red Hat operating system since Fedora Core 3, but it's the only thing that prevents me from using Fedora at home or on a server, and the only thing that prevents me from recommending it to friends.

Except that

[DrYak]

This time RedHat != Linux.

If RH starts loosing market share, it'll more likely be to other Linux distributor or other opensource os, like suse,ubuntu,debian,openbsd,etc.
It's not the whole Linux community of developppers ingoring they adversaries, it's only *a* specific solution vendor.
You can kill distribution, but it's much harder to kill Linux as a whole.

Netscape Navigator almost disappeared back then, because it depended on a sinle company and that company failed to notice the threat and lost market shares. ...

That and I'm sure Microsoft will manage to build something that sucks in terms of scaliability, reliability and above all : possibility of customisation and reasonnable per-CPU license price.
Some labs build huge clusters, this new Windows flavor must cost less than the "Windows Beginners Edition [a.k.a. 3rd world edition]" (*) and provide impeccable service, otherwise it can't compete with opensource softwares.

Plus, unlike in the browser case, Microsoft can't try to leverage its desktop OS monopoly : you can bundle a browser on a widely deployed OS, but you can't "bundle a cluster" inside the OS - that sentence doesn't make sense.
Clusters are mostly custom build to specific needs, by people who have enough technical knowledge to assemble whatever they need. Windows Cluster-flavor must attract them by its qualities, not because laziness drives them to choose whatever option came with the box...

(*): ...hum... wonder if this windows flavor could be subverted as an even cheaper Windows to be installed on desktops. (I don't mind missing all "wonderful" features available in other flavors like the ActiveX-bugged IE or the DRM-laden Media Player. Just want a kernel that is compatible with games. I'll fix the gaps with OSS and stick to linux for the rest)