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Will Red Hat Survive?
An anonymous reader writes "Red Herring has an in-depth analysis interviewing industry experts on what the future of Linux distributor Red Hat will likely be now that Oracle is offering cheaper support and services essentially identical to Red Hat Linux. Will Oracle purchase Red Hat? Or is it not yet too late?" From the article: "Mr. Dargo countered that Oracle's move indicated a lack of understanding of the value that Red Hat's support and service provide. But he noted that Red Hat could be vulnerable if Oracle manages to provide better service. 'If the strategy at Oracle works out, Red Hat is going to face some serious issues, but I don't think it is going to work out,' he said. 'There are lots of opportunities for Red Hat to do some aggressive and creative things to turn around.'"
Red Hat have been over-charging for a long time. If Novell had done something decent this would not be happening now.
:-)
Oracle will give them some healthy competition, may the best distro win.
Common sense is not so common
What will Oracle rip^^^base its Unbreakable Linux on?
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
I wish the beat your competition into the ground monopolist attitude that some people have would just die. This is the open source revolution here. We don't need to have one guy win while the other guy loses. Red hat does plenty of other things besides working with Oracle. Its not about making the other guy lose, its about you winning. If there is no market, then you all lose.
I think Red Hat will survive, as in keep alive. They'll not be raking in huge profits but if they put their head down and keep it steady they may just have a chance to share the market with Oracle. I agree to the fact that Red Hat overpriced their support, but now they have some serious thinking to do. Oracle is a very aggressive player and it'll want to squeeze every inch possible out of this venture. Red Hat will survive, because many people would still consider them as a de-facto standard, especially in countries like India where the only Linux distro which is seriously considered is RHEL. But there is no doubt that tough days lie ahead of Red Hat. But to me, this race is needed. Competition will drive quality. If only a single vendor rules the market, it does whatever it wants to. Now that a company like Oracle is competing, it may just mean good news to the consumers.
"Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."
RHEL might be the biggest Linux OS for (supported) Oracle deployments, but RedHat is much more than just an RHEL or Linux services company. In fact, one could argue that the success of RedHat Linux and the JBoss / JEMS platform might indeed be a serious threat to Oracle's survival... once other databases are made part of RedHat's application stack.
By undercutting and subsequently angling for a takeover of RedHat, Oracle is getting into a business which is not beneficial to customers and end-users.... the focal point of the entire Open Source and Free Software movements.
If Oracle wants to offer support Linux-based database solutions, it ought to come up with it's own distro. NOT kill RedHat.. the no. 1 distro. What would happen to RedHat's non-database successes... middleware, applications, hardware collaboration, education and research, training and services... solutions partners etc.? It would appear these are threats to Oracle's long-term survival.. but they are the most valuable things for customers (not just servers and infrastructure).
HP took over Compaq took over Digital... and now, the Unix businesses of Compaq and Digital (both very valuable for customers) have been lost forever.
Oracle might compete... but must not be allowed to takeover RedHat. In many ways they are bigger stumbling blocks to the Open Source revolution than even Microsoft.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I've never been an Oracle customer myself, but I know some people who heave been - and how content, or rather, how NOT content - they were with the service of the company. Red Hat, on the other hand, was awarded with the first place in some customer-contentment-survey recently cited by German IT-newsmag c't (where Oracle came in at around place 40 or so). So I suppose that Red Hat offers much better service, and will do so even more on a product THEY actually make themselves, compared with something Oracle basically just relables.
It could turn out a problem, however, that uneducated "decision-makers" (how I loathe that word) who don't give a shit about what their more tech-savvy and competent advisers say, and just go for "Unbreakable Linux", because it's cheaper and supported by a big and well known player of IT. Who has ever been fired for buying Micr..., uhm, Oracle?
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
...BSD has apparently been dying for a decade or so, so by my figures regarding *nix OSes it'll survive for at least a little while longer. A better question is will it survive long enough to see the arrival of Duke Nukem Forever?
We are in the future. Red Hat is dead. Now how would Oracle provide services for Red Hat?
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
I don't think that it will. It is one of the original heavyweights but in the face of newer and more specialised distros it no longer occupies a suitably small niche in order to ensure its long term continuation.
In my opinion, most serious developers will keep to a lighter distro, and most newbies will keep to a nice flowery distro such as Ubuntu, which prides itself on ease of use. Red Hat is no longer necesarry. Compettition will inevitably drive it away in the ever dynamic food-web of free software.
Oracle might steal some of the mindless drones from RedHat but more likely it'll hurt Novell and similar companies that also have also-ran distros from a big name company with no future. Most of us that have been using Linux for more than a few years will stick with RedHat or Debian. Since RedHat is known for their extra support most companies employing these people that actually know how to use Linux will probably opt for RedHat.
Pardon me for saying so but most of the people I know who use distros other than RedHat or Debian (Slackware and Gentoo get a honorable mention as popular among real Linux geeks) are fairly new or inexperienced. I certainly wouldn't bet my business on some untested fad distro.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
EnOh
Some people like to differ over that.
I think there ought to be an investigation to make sure Oracle isn't doing something anti-competitive.
Another industry heavyweight like Oracle promoting Linux should expand the Linux market rather than cannabalise it.
Those that consider their current arrangements good value won't be quick to run to save a few dollars and if Oracle starts to prove itself a strong Linux service provider RedHat is going to have to adjust, not shut the door!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If Slashdot is going to link to articles that predict "The Death of..." every time a prominent tech company takes a hit in the stock market, then its editors are about to be as 100 times as busy! Red Hat (two words ;) has lucrative multi-year deals with a number of big players (including, ironically enough, Oracle..), and they are savvy enough to use that time to circle the wagons and modify their business model to deal with this new competition. If they have to lower prices--fine. If they have to fire some people--fine. If, as you mentioned, they have to leverage the IP they have already invested into their products over the past decade or so--fine. What they won't do, as one of the Triangle's most important companies, is run in lieu of adapting.
I guess what few people seem to be talking about is "This is what Red Hat signed up for." When you base your solvency as a company on open source-based software, then this is one of the risks you take. Somebody else might just offer a very similar product at a very different price, using much of your hard work in the process. And that's OK, it comes with the territory. The problem, of course, is that the "somebody" is Oracle, who have the financial resources to bury Red Hat using their own product if they felt so inclined. In the same way in which Microsoft flooded the console market with cheap X-Boxes, taking a hit on each one, Oracle is more than capable of selling their services packages for $1 a pop if they really wanted to. Why isn't that happening yet? Because as I said, many of the big name companies that are using Linux-based solutions already have long-term commitments to Red Hat. This isn't war yet, it is a company building its war machines in preparation for the time when those support contracts expire. In the meantime, Red Hat has all the time in the world to improve itself as a company and to convince those who already use their products and services to stay with Red Hat in the future as well.
It looks like Oracle get the tough job of keeping their distro compatible with Red Hat.
Are they up to that? Are they up to handling and solving bugs and big crises?
Forking an Free/Open Source project is not so easy as people might think on the surface.
On one foot we have Oracle offering their linux flavor based on Redhat. If Redhat folds they are left with having to pick up where Redhat left off and move forward. I don't think Oracle is ready to put that kind of effort into something they wont actually own.
On the other foot, Redhat could start pushing alternate database solutions such as Postgresql. With commercial solutions available businesses may find that they don't need all of the features Oracle offers which not found in Postgresql.
I'll bet that when push comes to shove, Redhat could take some of Oracle's business.
Oracle and "cheap" in same sentence. What next? Microsoft and "gentle"? IBM and "modest"? Enron and "due diligence"?
Seriously, Oracle is never going to be a cheap solution in any market. They claim to be an enterprise software vendor. They charge prices that allow them to provide enterprise solutions very profitably. Oracle clients do not care about the price because they run their business more profitably on Oracle software. In many comapnies, small projects are developed in bitty things like MS Access and then ported to Oracle when they have proven a good idea. Getting your app an Oracle back-end was seen as proof you did a great job when I was contracting at Vodafone for example.
The very fact that they have the Oracle brand behind them means they can and will be the most expensive provider of enterprise level support of Linux.
Unless Red Hat has some aspiration to be more expensive than Oracle, the arrival of Oracle in the market can only be good news as it will grow the overall marketplace.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Despite what Mr. Greenbaum says, Red Hat does have some intellectual property. In fact, that's why Oracle (according to the article) is indemnifying its customers against IP issues that may crop up, just to be on the safe side.
The real problem is that all that great stuff you mentioned will belong to Oracle's if/when Red Hat is bought out. After all, we are talking about a company that pulled down no more than $200 million last year revenues vs. a company that pulled down $14.4 billion in revenues last year. The saying "I could buy and sell your ass" seems to apply here.
Offering support for half the price on the same product reads like the first part of a plan by Oracle to bilk Red Hat long enough, and make its stock price low enough, in preparation for a buyout. I seemed optimistic that Red Hat could use the time between now and then to improve its product and support and maintain its hold in the corporate Linux market, but upon further consideration I am more skeptical. Red Hat can "love Linux" all it wants, but that won't make stockholders happy and it won't keep the wolves away from the door.
Just a quick look at the facts:
RedHat makes a distro called RedHat Linux (duh!)
Oracle is providing support for RedHat + Oracle.
Oracle is making their own distro based on on RedHat and providing support for it.
... therefore ..... Oracle .. cannot ... kill ... off ... RedHat! Duh!
If RedHat were to die, guess what, so would Oracle's distro and so would
Oracle's support of REDHAT LINUX! Duh! Oracle needs RedHat to
be with us in order to make its own distro.
Oracle cannot roll its own funky distro because nobody in
the commercial world would respect a funky distro. Everyone in the commercial
world respects RedHat
Think it through: why did Oracle announce its own derivative distro
based off RedHat? Why not slackware? SuSe? Mandriva? Gentoo?
Shoot, why not the current golden child of the Linux world: ubuntu?
Because none of them has the prestige and respectability of RedHat.
Oracle was very careful to make it clear that their fork would be
minimal: remove the RedHat icons and logos and put theirs in -- that
way they are not mucking with the quality and stability of the RedHat
software that businesses have come to expect. No serious business is
going to jump head first into a dark chasm with some FunkyTown Linux distro (TM!?!?).
So Oracle cannot afford to mess with the RedHat distro.
Given time Novell and I'm sure the ubuntu folks will have the prestige
and marketing presence of RedHat but at this rate not for at least
5+ years unless something dramatic happens like some large country's
government announces it's going to go whole hog with one of the less
well known distros.
A linux from scratch distro, how long does it take? Mine took about 2 months the first time I did it without understanding
very much. Second time it took me a week. After that I built a source toolchain system.
My point is that if Jaromil can single handedly put Dyne together, and I can single handedly put my own
distro together **FROM SCRATCH**, why does a company as big as Oracle go and do something as
weak as just hijack another distro. Can't they get their own ball to play with?
Oracle said they were going to simply rebrand RHEL. Let Redhat do the heavy lifting so Oracle can cash in.
Also Oracle said they have support staff down to the kernel level and will give back any development they might do but Oracle is setting up to mitigate any need for Redhat the company AND plans to offer RHEL support services at discount pricing.
If successful, Redhat will be forced to reduce their support pricing and will likely lose most of their support services currently that Oracle is already running over. This will be a major pinch on RH.
On the other hand this may force RH to become much more aggressive in enterprise class database middle ground thus pinching Oracle on a large and competitive growth market. Will it make up the difference? Hard to say but should be interesting.
What Oracle isn't going to suffer well is any encroachment on their cherry tree. Any competition that forces Oracle to drop price on their database product is going to hurt worse than Redhat's being forced to cut support pricing for their OS.
Linux will.
That already respin from the RHEL srpms? Seems like they now have to build a community for "Unbreakable". Shouldn't be difficult given who they are, but why start from scratch?
;)
Interesting strategy though. Wonder if this is payback for JBoss?
Definitely don't think that RH will go into bankruptcy any time soon. They've got a rich product stack and plenty of customers. The only thing their really lacking is an enterprise database platform. May RH should consider buying Sybase or the Informix stack from IBM so they could go head to head with Oracle
Sure thing. Let me just reach into my wallet and pull out $14 billion dollars, the approximate difference in annual revenue between the companies (hint: Red Hat's revenue is not even 1 billion, so most of that 14 belongs to Oracle). I hate to be cynical, but ideals are no match for lots and lots of money, my friend. You can rally around Red Hat all you want, but that won't change the fact that Red Hat and Oracle are both companies--capitalistic entities that are subject to market forces. And as trite as it may seem, if these two companies are "competing" than we have a way of measuring who is "winning" by counting dollars and equity. And as much as we love them, Red Hat loses that game, bigtime. I predict a buyout before Q4 2007.
Incidentally, you might not want to call it an open source revolution. That tends to scare away investors. And investors are very important to the open source revo...darn, now you've got me doing it!
Surely the bigger loser here is Novell. Oracle is competing with Red Hat for support of RHEL, but then Red Hat never had the monopoly in that market anyway: plenty of people used Red Hat without paying for AS-quality support. What this move does do is make the Red Hat flavour of Linux even more clearly the mainstream enterprise distribution. How well Red Hat will cope with competition from Oracle in offering support for that product remains to be seen, but I'd have thought that selling a non-Red Hat flavour of Linux to an IT department suddenly got a whole lot harder.
Virtually serving coffee
I don't think people here understand the magnitude of what is going on right now. Oracle does not own the full stack. They have a great database, they have a great ERP/CRM or whatever PeopleSoft really is. They have a terrible app server, and they have no operating system. By offering rebranded RedHat, they make it plausible that they will buy RedHat. Everybody has gotten this far. However, what people don't seem to realize is that by doing this they acquire both an OS and a good app server. They would own an entire software stack.
.NET anything. Here's another bad thing, both the distribution mechanisms of SLES and RHEL will change. The only two real, commercial Linux distributions may have just become a lot harder to get your hands on... who will be there as an independent vendor not trying to sell you a whole software stack when all you want is an enterprise Linux distribution? Don't put your favorite distro here.... because now the difference between those and these new "enterprise" offerings is HUGE in CIO mindshare.
;)
Both Microsoft and IBM (owners of their own software stacks) can't afford to see this happen. Microsoft will not make a play on RedHat. Their desire is to see Linux growth stifled if not fully fail. Losing Red Hat in the market would be a good step, but not enough. I don't know what Microsoft's play is, or if they can even afford the loss in credibility on "opensource is bad for you" if they make one. IBM will make a play. My prediction (no direct knowledge) is that IBM purchases either Red Hat or Novell. Either move is a defensive one. The problem with either? If IBM purchases Red Hat, JBoss is dead. IBM has Geronimo and IBM has WebSphere, they don't need JBoss. Perhaps it's the other way and Geronimo would die and WebSphere would move to be a little more like JBoss under the covers, either way, you've lost a choice. Red Hat would continue albeit in a much different form.
Here's the bad news. If Oracle buys Red Hat, and IBM buys Novell as a defensive move, IBM wouldn't continue Mono. They don't want
I do believe that whichever one (if not both) IBM purchases, the open community whether it be Fedora or OpenSuSE would continue on. They'd probably get restructured to more closely resemble the Eclipse foundation, but there you'd have it. Oracle would keep theirs up for awhile to, because they'd need the innovation to come from the community and there'd be much less of a difference between the Enterprise and Community versions over time.
Something to chew on.
And asks:
"Will Ford do well when they do their buy-back of stock?"
And then expects a sensible answer......
*sigh*
The real question people should be asking is "Will Oracle survive?" The big proprietary databases used to dominate the market. Now the FLOSS database solutions are reliable and sophisticated enough that exansive solutions such as Oracle are only required by niche applications. The only thing really keeping them afloat is intertia: there are a number of talented Oracle DBA's who would like to continue using what they know; and there is a stable of important applications which will continue to certify Oracle for some time. It will take time for existing application vendors to migrate to commodity backends, but it is very much in their best interest to do so. If they do not, they will be trammelled by their competitors who do.
On another note, the Linux kernel dev team should make special note about Oracle's indemnification rumblings, which go so far as to raise the specter of SCO. Should Oracle inject code into the kernel to which they own copyright, it would be no surprise at all to see them leverage these assets in an underhanded fashion. If I were Linus, I wouldn't touch any Oracle contributed code with a ten foot pole, unless they sign over copyright.
Premium pricing indeed. This side of the pond, Red Hat costs:
AS (4-16 CPU servers), 24/7/365 support, 1 hour response, £1,388/year ($2,636 at todays spot $ rate)
AS (4-16 CPU servers), working hours Mon-Fri, 4 hour response, £833/year ($1,582)
ES (1-2 CPU servers), working hours Mon-Fri, 4 hour response, £444/year ($843)
ES (1-2 CPU servers), 30 days install support then just updates, £195/year ($370)
and those are unlimited incidents, and no CALs for each user (put as many on as you wish with no further charge).
If Oracle were smart, there's nothing stopping them having the billing relationship with the customer and subcontracting back. They could even afford to throw that in free of charge with most Oracle DB licenses without denting their profits too much. That way, customer still get their updates in a timely fashion, and Oracle have no CentOS type infrastructure to set up that (a) costs money and (b) delays the updates.
Still, Oracle are fairly well embedded in large customers at the very top end, and do not have the reach to address Red Hat's base in any significant way. Even MySQL lap the total size of Oracle's installed base twice every day of the week.
It's almost if someone's thrown their rattles out of the pram when Red Hat spurned a "we'll buy you" proposal. If it were true, the clever bit is that Larry managed to get the share price to dip, when most attempted takeovers have the opposite effect!
Ian W.
Everybody acts like this is a big threat to RedHat. It's just a validation of their business model.
When I buy support from RedHat now, and my manager asks me "but what if they go bust"/"get sued out of existence" etc. I can say Oracle (we aren't much worried about getting sued ourselves, since it happens regularly). Also, when you see the holes in Oracles support (Jboss / etc. etc.) I can now defend more clearly the value that RedHat has over other supported products (Windows doesn't include any database in the default install).
In a sense, this is a great thing for RedHat. RedHat has clear experience and everybody knows how easy/difficult it is to get support from them. Their choice to do very different things from Linus in 2.4 memory management was clearly good. Maybe five years from now, with a clear track record and a full range of application support, Oracle might be worth considering for RedHat support, but for now, it only provides extra marketing for RedHat. Most probably, though, they will end up buying support from RedHat themselves.
This is the choice that free software has always been about. Anything that Oracle does can be taken over and used by others. RHEL will never be killed, even if RedHat could be (and it can't).
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Yes Red Hat will survive (or, at least not die because of Oracle).
There are those who want a supplier of just a linux system. Linux will always be strategic to Red Hat, but Oracle can change and will never be so Linux-focused.
There are lots of people out there, who, for different reasons, dont want anything to do with Oracle.
Novell's distro (AKA SuSE, free version at http://www.opensuse.org/) is not exactly an unknown also-ran distro. They had several years of experience before being acquired by Novell.
Now SuSE is often, and to some extent justly, accused of being overly eager to look like Windows. But I still consider it a distro that can be recommended to Linux newbies. It is easy to install and get started with, and from there you can work your way up to more "hardcore" distributions.
C - the footgun of programming languages
1) Oracle has come out with greate support real cheap
You made this up. Nobody said anything about the quality of the support at all because the quality of the support is immaterial. It doesn't have to be "great", only adequate and cheap--cheaper than what Red Hat offers. Strike one.
2) So RedHat is doomed, worthless useless and it's stock price will collapse
Pretty much. I can tell you don't know much about this or you would know that Red Hat's (two words) stock already has collapsed. Red Hat stock just lost 25% of its value based merely on the news that Oracle will be competing with for its support contracts. What exactly do you think will happen when Oracle starts to gain some momentum and actually is competing? If you don't believe me about the stock price situation, just check the second paragraph of the posted article that you clearly didn't read before posting. Strike two.
3) the united way is doing great
I see now. You're just a troll. Strike three, you're out.
4) Oracle is going to buy RedHat now.
No, in fact I ballparked a buyout before this time, next year. That's hardly "now", is it? You just got beaned in the head while walking back to the dugout.
As Bruce Perens said it a while ago:
If you need a stable, easy-to-administer, well-established production OS, I would suggest Debian.
I'd be rather wary of what an Oracle Linux would look like, even if it is based on RHEL. Bleah! I'd be much more nervous for Red Hat if MySQL were to do this.
Keep in mind, that Oracle is pushing the same distro. The real difference is who will give better service at lower prices. A lot of ppl here say that Oracle will crush Redhat. Yet these same ppl knock Oracle for their service and security (oracle is not that bad; they are much better than MS).
My belief is that Oracle will pull some of RH's coders to their side as well as hire new folks. These ppl will enhance Linux at a much faster clip, which feeds back into Fedora. RH will come down in price but not down to Oracle's level (at least not for some time). I would not be surprised to see Novell and Ubuntu do some more hiring to make sure that they grab the best as well as go after some of the support contracts.
The loser in this will be MS (and possibly competing distros). The real winner will be the end-users. The Linux world is about to get competitive again WRT service, and will have even faster development.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Thank you for sharing your history with Red Hat. I thought that Red Hat had developed some goodwill in the Linux community over the last decade or so. But what I'm hearing from you is that they've squandered a lot of that and essentially abandoned their original user base, including diehards such as yourself. Would it be too fatalistic to intimate that if Red Hat can't win you and others like you back in the future, then there will be no future for Red Hat?
You worry too much. The simple answer is that even if redhat dies, Oracle has the source code. They would simply roll their own. In fact, if Oracle is smart, they will push a desktop system with their business apps. As they make inroads, they might consider a new network computer (ala thinknic (but offering flash instead of a dvd) or Sun's java station).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't even know what that means. I'm sure Oracle, with its massive number of support people can figure out how to offer the same, if not better level of support.
Yeah, and what happens when Oracle offers these people double or triple what they are getting now. Sure some diehard open source people might stay, but they can't do it alone. Redhat will be gone within a year.
>>> Red Hat charges a premium for RHEL AS, less for ES and WS is priced similarly to Microsoft products
Everytime I have approached Red Hat for volume licensing they are **ALWAYS** more expensive than Microsoft. In fact the latest bid is 100% more; that is Red Hat is twice as expensive. (this is not for AS).
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
There are plenty of companies which are concerned with nothing but the best price for their support. Usually these are small companies, though sometimes they are larger ones too. Companies *really* concerned about cost ignore companies like Oracle and instead run Debian, SuSE, White Box, or some other distro. If they need support, they tend to find the least expensive, small consulting firm they can (like mine). The ones that believe "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" will likely consider Oracle.
But, the big companies will stick with Red Hat. Why? Simple. When they have an issue with an application, Red Hat has engineers which troubleshoot the problem, fix it, then release a new package. Sure, Oracle *could* do that, but can they get Red Hat to accept the patches? More importantly, will they just say "sorry, that's a bug in the vendor's software"? Red Hat has engineers who are dedicated to patching and improving the OS.
That said, the large companies are likely to exert a bit of muscle to get a better deal on their Red Hat contracts by comparing the Red Hat support costs to Oracle. In the end, this will certainly cost Red Hat some revenue, but I don't personally see it as dire as wall street did on Thursday. And in the end, the marketis certainly big enough that Oracle could end up having a positive influence on Red Hat's market share, as yet another company advocated Linux to the masses.
By undercutting and subsequently angling for a takeover of MicroSoft, RedHat is getting into a business which is not beneficial to customers and end-users.
The best that a giant company like Oracle can do is copy Red Hat's OS. That says a lot for Red Hat. If my job depended on which OS to buy, I'd buy Red Hat.
Who puts in the effort and expense of delivering to a non-existent market? There is always a market, or just a bunch of bankrupt fools with old business cards living on the streets.
If there is a fixed-size market, then "normal" business competition comes into play. In such a situation, it is about "making the other guy lose" so you can steal their share, because it's the only way to grow. For whatever reason, people don't consider stability and long-term viability worthwhile anymore -- only perpetual growth and expansion is rewarded.
Unfortunately for the unimaginative, markets aren't infinite on a finite planet. You can't keep growing at the expense of others. Sooner or later you have to get the neurons firing and come up with ideas that target new markets others haven't exploited (fully) yet, or start acquiring those who have new ideas.
But how much benefit is their to acquisition if you didn't perceive the potential in the first place? If the monopolist never thought of the idea in the first place, how can they possibly grow that new market?
Success takes more than money and contacts -- it takes a clear understanding of goals and a decent plan on how to get there. The monopolist may be a viable investor, but as a controlling owner a monopolist usually just strangles the acquisition in their frustration to make it fit their existing, stagnant model.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Why shouldn't Red Hat sell to IBM? They are currently doing some of the support for Red Hat and they don't even have a distro. What better company to supply support and updates for RHEL than IBM? IBM could also easily match the prices oracle is putting out and help the OSS movement at the same time. Plus this would only benefit IBM and Red Hat.
Since both companies are publicly traded, it's easy to see what the people who are paid the big buck$ to carefully evaluate the future of both companies because 10's (100's?) of millions of dollars are riding on it have decided about the future of both companies.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=RHAT&t=1y. RedHat's 1 year price trend.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=ORCL&t=1y Oracle's 1 year price trend.
I'd say the big-money decision makers have declared Oracle the winner in this one. RedHat's a dead man walking. Meanwhile, microsoft is unchanged over the same 12 month period.
Money talks people.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Despite what they say, Red Hat hasn't been selling service, they've been selling software. Read their licenses, and it says that you may install one copy of RHEL for each support contract you buy.... whether you want to service or not. If you want to install an extra copy for development or training, you pay for it, just like with Microsoft. In fact, MS might have better deals for developers and admins. Sure, you can get Fedora for free, but it's not the same product. If you want RHEL, you pay for it, one copy one "support contract"... plain and simple.
It was a good means to quickly generate revenues from corporate buyers when they implemented it, and it sounded good to Wall Street for a couple of years. Now they're catching on... selling free software for $300/server/year (or whatever it is now) is not a long-term business strategy, and that it was only a matter of time before somebody realized that web updates can be sold for a lot cheaper. I used to happily pay $70/server/year to subscribe to RHN for my production servers when I used RH9, but after the change to RHEL licensing terms, the stuff I do couldn't justify the price. I can't pay for the same support that a corporate customer requires, I just want updates.
Not that I'm any fan of Oracle... if anybody can screw this up, it'll be them. But it really does send a strong signal to Red Hat, because their business model just isn't sustainable beyond the small but lucrative niche that they currently sell to.
Maybe so, but having the certs is the ONLY way that Linux of any kind would be approved to deploy on certain networks. No certs, no deployment. Pick a different OS platform. Period. As far as having and maintaining these certs go, RHEL is the only game in town.
We've been waiting for years for someone to get a Linux distribution, any Linux distribution, approved for a particular DoD network that we deploy our systems on. We can't do it ourselves because the process is too onerous and expensive for us to take on. Nonetheless, we'd LOVE to deploy our systems on this network using a Linux platform, but until something gets approved we're stuck with Solaris. Solaris-8 on SPARC, that is. It's the only Unix OS approved for this network. We don't make the rules, but if we want to stay in business, we have to follow them.
That RHEL4 is Common Criteria Scheme certified at CAPP/EAL4+ is just the first step toward getting an OS platform certified to deploy on this network. Without these certs, there'd be no way. If Red Hat goes out of business, then there will be networks out there that will never, ever see a Linux distribution.
In fact, we're aware of a particular program that's done a lot of the heavy lifting to get RHEL-4 certified for deploying on this network. The certifying authority is close to making a decesion. Now, I suspect this authority will just say no. Thanks a lot, Larry. You've torpedoed several avenues of innovation.
If Oracle would guarantee that they'll maintain the certs, etc, then maybe there'd be a chance. But I don't trust Oracle.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Could you put some specifics to this?
Lets say I have a 2,000 person company and I want the following services on as little boxes as I can get by with.
File/Print
Web server/application server - both internal and external
Database server (to house custom shopping cart style web application + internal apps)
Content Management Server
Email + Scheduling
Development Tools
General support, say 8:00am to 5:00pm type of stuff.
Virtual System support, so the company can have a "test" and "development" environment.
Virus control for the server
Virus control for email
Spam software for email.
I would be curious to see the Microsoft offering on this. Every time we do a comparison Linux comes out on top. Granted, we don't use RedHat any more, but I would imagine we would get the $350 a year version if we needed to.
Again,I would like to know the prices that you are getting, and what if any leverage you have with Microsoft. I can say that since we switched off of Microsoft we have never looked back and other than a few weird issues with some crappy hardware, we haven't had any major issues. Our cost have gone down. The freedom alone of not having to go to finance to get approval of projects that "need" to be done is worth our migration alone. Again, I want to state that we didn't choose RedHat, but at least we had a choice.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
I work in sub-200 people environments in switzerland. So my perpspective might differ a lot from yours, but i've found microsoft to offer good value for their money.
1 CHF (Swiss Franc) = 0.80 US$
If you're a sub-15 people company, and only have one machine, Microsoft Small Business Server is a good bet. You can get the Standard Edition for 800 CHF, and the Premium Edition (includes SQL Server and ISA Server (no idea why you would want that)) for 1300 CHF. Each includes 5 User CALs, So for 15 people you need two more five packs or about 1000 each. This price doesn't include support, though. Also, i'm not much of a fan of SBS because of several restrictions (only a single domain controller, Exchange and DC on the same machine), but these are the standard practice in such small companies.
Microsoft offers their SBS server for up to 75 users. I don't think thats a good idea.
Companies in this size usually don't have any IT staff, so self help is important. With windows, the people at least feel that they can try to fix problem themselves (which they usually can't). With Linux, this isn't the case. (Just because windows server offers a GUI for 80% of it's functions doesn't mean that it's simple).
Windows is mostly the only choice if you are cooperating with other companies. Some might offer their shipping calculation program only for windows, some specialized ERP software might only be available or windows, etc. pp.
I've found windows to offer the best SMB desktop management, everything from redhat etc. seems to be geared at big companies with a standard desktop images. Group Policies are a fucking cool thing.
Oracle's challenge to Red Hat might produce considerable good. I think that Red Hat is too expensive and too focused on the big enterprise. That seems like good business, since it sure attracted Oracle. But that strategy might have some deeper, long-term implications.
At some time in the recent past, Red Hat, I think, was close to being synonymous with Linux (or at least a linux you could bring home to mom). Universities that had linux networks had Red Hat networks, and all those C.S. grads were familiar with the distro. A lot of experimental software from academia was written and debugged on Red Hat, and not likely to run elsewhere. At the same time, it was possible to run a little business with Red Hat on your machines. But I think the Fedora experiment killed all that. Ask anyone who's got an FC 4 machine like me. Red Hat is just another big company -- only it's not so big and like the article points out, it doesn't own the rights to the product it sells. I think that Red Hat is to a large degree coasting on its image as one of the primo keepers of the linux flame. Its image, and service, and prices are all it has. And maybe Oracle's move will nudge Red Hat to improving its ephemeral product.
Maybe I'm out of my league here, since I'm not a big enterprise, but I'm not a hobbyist either. For several years, I maintained a RH subscription on the server that faces the outside world. It just lapsed and I'm on the fence. I know that neither Red Hat nor Oracle cares about me. I also know that I'll always be dependent on some organization to keep my systems current, and I know that the service is worth real money, but I don't like the huge divide that RH imposed on us.
As for Redhat and the whole distribution world. I kind of think a kick in the ass is needed. They've done some killer stuff, built linux into what it is today but it seems like they've fallen in to the trap that many distribution providers have and ever x months (or years in Debian's case) they rev the version numbers, throw some new graphics in and call it a new distribution.
Some things I'd like to see:
...has been um... not always great.
OK, actually, it was always terrible. Is this just our bad luck, I wonder? In any case, I wouldn't say that all RedHat support engineers are at the same level as Redhat's kernel developers - to say it mildly.
This is good for Linux in the long run. Larry (and his people) are smart and are using the open-source business models in new ways to accelerate the adoption of OSS. I think they see the problem with RedHat and the expensive support costs that they apply to the 'product'. I purchaed a full-blown RHEL4 AS subscription for our 8-way Xeon development server. I had an issue regarding DVD burner support for the longest time. It never was being fixed in their 'updates' and when I invoked my support avenue the canned responses et al just pissed me off. We/I were not impressed with the support (especially for the cost of an AS subscription). Recently, when the subscription expired I just reformatted the drive and installed RHEL4 WS just to see if it would work on the 8-way. No problems, AS is just an overpriced 'product'. I'd say the WS version performs marginally faster on the 8-way. I've reduced our costs to a WS level which I think is fair. I think Oracles prices are fair. I think capitalism and OSS are viable, and this will prove it.
RedHat has support of Fedora developers.
Novell has support of OpenSuse developers.
Ubuntu has support of Debian developers.
Sun Solaris has support of OpenSolaris developers.
Companies use the commercial version of software that their geeks like and use.
What open-source developer base does Oracle have?
I doubt Oracle linux will amount to much other than indemnification insurance for cheapscape companies.
Spoken like someone who has never spoken with any of Oracle's support people.
I was in Antarctica when the IPO for RedHat took place. Via a satellite phone connection, I bought shares. I was going to by $10,000 worth, but whinged and only bought $1000. Oh well. When I sold it, I had enough to put a hefty down payment on my first house. It was a good ride.
A defense contractor in Antarctica is a bad idea. Get Raytheon OUT of Antarctica.
If you are a sub 15 person company couldn't Fedora or OpenSuSE work well for you? You get everything for free and the GUI isn't bad at all. The other advantage is that the sub 15 person company loves to use the server as a "workstation" also. You would loose that temptation with Linux.
The other advantage is that you don't EVER have to worry about CALs. It seems to me that the only real advantage that Microsoft would have would be that it has AD. Granted it isn't a true directory, but it can provide a more simplified admin console. In your case though, you wouldn't really see any advantage of a directory service with so few users.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
We will support RedHat of Oracle plays dirty and tries to kill/takeover Redhat, just as we supported Firefox against IE. Oracle will be the bad guy. Being bad guy, is bad in the world of IT. There are hordes of sharp, wise, conscious it managers, programmers, developers and administrators who do not hesitate to take sides.
.asp extension break "getting hacked" records over the net, whereas despite being open, sites with .php do not suffer as much.
think why things with
i would be very cautious not to even shake a fist at something that it community likes, if i were oracle.
Read radical news here
The answer is, of course, it depends.
If you are a information technology company, it might be possible and might even have lots of advantages to use linux exclusively.
However, if you are not an IT company, i don't see linux to stand a chance. There are some technical reasons here, but also social reasons:
The technical reasons:
* Software, which the company needs might not be available under linux. Using VMs or WINE might solve the problem in the short term, but what if the a new version doesn't work anymore?
* Especially for low end hardware, there isn't much support for linux. But if we're honest here, low end hardware causes lot's of trouble under windows.
* Integration with linux is very difficult. All kinds of mobile phones, pdas, mp3 players, etc. can be hooked up to windows with the help of a CD. With linux, it isn't as easy. While some devices might be supported, some of them won't be. Unfortunately, this also includes high end hardware (like Windows Mobile PDAs).
* Groupware with Linux seems to be a problem still. I lack experience in this area, but last time i checked solutions here weren't as well integrated (for example lacking support for Direct Push, Blackberry, etc.)
The social reasons:
* There usually are no people with linux knowledge ("Power Users"). This means for every so little problem, external support is required, adding a lot to the cost of linux. A technicians hour is usually the same as a single CAL. This problem will solve itself over time, though.
* People are afraid of Linux. It is new and unknown. People like to have something to blame. If they can't get their document out because they have to use Linux to write it, they will blame Linux. Irregardless of facts.
As it is now, linux can't be adopted by small companys. Larger companys have much more resources available, and might save money when deploying linux.
...of the despair linux images.
It doesn't matter if Oracle provides better support--only that it provides at least the same level of support for less. That alone will have resounding consequences for Red Hat. Trust me, there is a lot sneakier stuff you can do to depress a stock price than what Oracle is doing now. They haven't even scratched the surface.
This is a good question. The answer is that Red Hat is a publicly-held company and it doesn't matter what its founder, executive officers, or employees think. The only people who matter when it comes to buyouts are the shareholders. And shareholders care about what's best for the shareholders--they don't give two shits about "keeping Linux alive" or about any kind of technological mashup problems in a potential buyout.
What happens is, Oracle presents its offer. Usually the offer involves purchasing at a designated price all of the important shares of the company that's being bought out, and often issuing stock in the buyer's company as incentive--like in this case it would be Oracle stock offered to Red Hat shareholders. Then the shareholders vote. If the offer pleases the shareholders, then Red Hat as we know it is no more. That's really all there is to it. Once you open up your company to public ownership and issue stock in the company, then you forgo the right to refuse business offers that will make the new owners of the company more money.
is a loss leader for Oracle, and it hurts Microsoft. Oh, and will make it cheaper for Oracle to buy them later, if they want to, which they do, because Larry's pissed at RedHat's CEO for buying JBoss.
I think RedHat should place an addendum to the license on which it is released. Basically, Oracle and all subsidiaries and parent companies may not use, modify,... etc. etc. any RedHat package including Fedora. Anyone else use and modify at your own discretion.
Screw Oracle, updates will basically cease to exist for them and so will their customers.
yeah right ... this will destroy the Oracle consulting market.
Weren't we just talking about servers in the postings above? These reasons all seem oriented toward workstation users.
Most Linux servers don't need much care after they're set up. A small business with a Linux box running Samba and (perhaps) an IMAP server and Apache can be all many companies need in the way of a server. Throw in Webmin and show the person how to add/delete users, and you're pretty much done.
The only missing ingredient is group calendaring, but there are a number of free web-based calendar applications, or you can use a calendaring program that shares data via ical files.
Most of these companies don't store their data in an SQL server; any databases they have usually live in Access or Excel. And, I'm not sure what "integration" problems you're going to have with a combination of Windows on the desktop and a Linux box in the back room. Most of the devices you mention would be connected to the Windows machines, not the Linux server.
(Even if you have Linux desktops, they fully support any USB device that looks like mass-storage, my Archos mp3/video player for instance. For cameras, there are even custom drivers for certain models like Canons.)
Finally, of course, if you use a totally-free distro like CentOS you're not paying for the software, and you're especially not paying per-seat for CALs.
Have you actually run a Linux server in a small-office setting? Most of the machines I've installed have uptimes in the hundreds of days and never need service. (Which is great for the client, but not so good for me!)
It seems i was drifting a bit to the workstation focus, which wasn't really the intention of this discussion. That's my fault.
Even linux servers need care after they're setup. You know, even open source applications have security vulnerabilities. And installing updating isn't as easy as on windows (when it works).
Please don't assume that all small companies work unprofessionally with Excel and Access. At least here in switzerland, it's not really possible to be lawful with just easing excel and access (because of variety of accounting and salary reasons). So even small businesses need some kind of ERP software. And those usually use some sort of commercial database backend, like Oracle, MSSQL or DB2.
Also, when using Linux as a Server for windows, you will lack several rather important things: Centrally managed antivirus solutions (yes, they make sense in an SMB), centrally managed windows updates (yes, they make sense too!).
Also, IMAP and a Web calendering app isn't the same as a groupware. Your contacts aren't stored on the server, there's no integration between mail and calender, and you're probably missing a uniform web interface for both.
Next point, as i already mentioned: What about synchronization? How do you sync your contacts, web calender, et. al. to your mobile devices? Even when using windows on the desktop, this isn't as easy to do when all your information is spread out over three different applications (Contacts: MUA, Calender: Web-Based, Mail: IMAP).
And for your last question:
Yes, i did and do. For my parents company. It works fine so far, but all the issues mentioned here are their. Luckily, there are only three machines.
For windows, i've worked with much larger environments, the biggest being about 150 people. I've also evaluated linux a number of times for 75-150 people companies, because they wanted to save money with it. But the integration is severely lacking. And, as you seem to imply, maintenance is lacking with your linux setups, which isn't a good thing, ever. At least windows with auto update mostly works, and helps people install updates on their SBS servers. Or non-SBS windows servers.
So if this works for Oracle RedHat goes out of business, and Oracle loses all that free integration work RedHat was doing for them. Oracle's overhead at that point will have to go up, or they will severely hurt Linux development and therefore adoption. RedHat, IBM, and Novell are probably the 3 biggest corporate contributors to open source with RedHat being the largest (my guess). If Oracle puts RedHat out of business they will have to sustain the same level of contribution as RedHat currently provides or Linux loses. Oracle wants Linux to win, Linux is the only competitor to Windows left. Solaris has lost, Mac OS isn't going anywhere (does oracle run on MacOS?).
If it doesn't work, and I don't think it will... then nothing's changed. I don't think it will "work" because 1) Sure the Oracle guys are smart, but do they really have a grasp of the entire Linux software stack? Will they really openly work with customers deploying Jboss? PostgreSQL? MySQL? I suspect that as with alot of other businesses they will be reluctant to cannibalize their cash cows, the support guys will be trained to try to sell Oracle products into this support channel because the "support" they are providing is a loss leader to try to get people to convert to Oracle products... Well all of us who are using RedHat are doing so because we didn't want to pay a 50-60k/yr license fee to Oracle. If Oracle doesn't try to sell their products through this channel it makes absolutely no sense for them, they won't be able to provide solid support forever at the prices they have stated. If Oracle support isn't as good as RedHat people won't go with Oracle, and if Oracle doesn't sell more product because of this linux support stuff, then they will never make any money from it and eventually the shareholders will demand they ditch it... Either way they lose, either they have to increase price to cover costs, or they have to piss off their customers by constantly nagging them to ditch Postgre for Oracle, Jboss for whatever Oracles app server is, and they lose customers...
IBM's Informix "stack" is slated to be merged into DB2. DB2 needs the technology acquired in the Informix purchase. And isn't Microsoft's SQL Server based on an older version of Sybase?
Outside pehaps selling support to their own database customers, I can't see many people wanting to switch support to a company that does not develop or build the product that they are supposed to be supporting. Will I be able to call up Oracle and tell them that my hardware doesn't work with the latest kernel and have them fix it like RedHat has often done? If not, why would I pay Oracle for support? Oracle will have to hire some serious experts to maintain and fix their distribution, as that's what their customers will be expecting. Oracle does not have the background in this business to compete, and I certainly wouldn't commit my corporate IT department to an Oracle contract.
Larry hates Bill. Lots of smaller and start up shops now run Oracle on RHEL. He wants the big boys to do it to, but they don't because Larry thinks that RHEL is not an "enterprise OS". So these shops are instead running on Winndows which Larry hates. So Larry makes it an "enterprise OS" but doing one thing that RedHat does not: back porting bug fixes. The other thing he does is remove the fear of SCO suing whoever uses HIS linux distro - he holds them harmless and shoulders all liability on their behalf. All other users of other distros have to shoulder that burden themselves. Larry won't kill RH. All the work they do benefits him. Larry saw RHEL as the linux leader for Oracle installs and that is why he picked them. He wants them to carry on, and develop and distribute as they have been, but the money they make is in support. He'll take every support dollar he can get. He for sure won't get them all (many only on prinicple), so RH will survive, but all the big boys that want to run RH, but couldn't because of one of those two issues, now can.
Rest in Peace Oracle. This is going to be the motivation many businesses need to switch from Oracle to MySQL or Postgres. Oracle is shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. RHEL has so much more to offer than Oracle. We're not going to want to change OS (even flavors) now that we're locked into support contracts with RH. We already use MySQL for a number of smaller non-critical apps. It has a better track record than Oracle and it's "After a week of troubleshooting, you need this obscure patch, which will break the other obscure patch that you needed last month, so we're working on a thrid patch which will be out next month" typical support. I just don't see how this will benefit Oracle.
Oracle will offer support cheap at first, then raise the price. Typical monopolist behavior. If I was redhat I would grow my postgresql offerings and eat Oracle up as linux in general is eating microsft on sun.