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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.
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!
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.
Some people like to differ over that.
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.
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.
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
They're not doing something anticompetitive, they're doing something competitive.
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
>>> 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
I am one of the people much like the GP who got burned by Red Hat during the RH9 to enterprise Linux conversion. I had just bought a (personal) subscription to show support for a company that I respected, which was canceled with no refund about 3 months into a year contract. This, unsurprisingly, left a very bad taste in my mouth.
However, all is not lost for those who prefer a Red Hat style distribution that is stable rather than the Fedora line. I am currently extremely happy with CentOS, a community rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux line. I never used Red Hat's support other than for updates and now I find that I prefer yum over up2date for updates anyway. I would also like to take a hat off to the KDE-RedHat and RPMForge projects, who provide many of the packages that RH is lacking; especially in the area of desktop support.
My point here is that while I was an avid supporter of Red Hat, I have found that with Linux I am not tied to a single vendor and in fact, my experience is exactly the opposite. The only one losing here is Red Hat because I no longer buy support from them.
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.
I expanded on this below, so I won't rehash, and instead answer the main question:
Would I ever go back to RedHat?
It is very possible. Everyone makes mistakes, myself included. But I wouldn't go back until they changed their business model to something that is more friendly to small guys. I wouldn't even demand an apology, although one is certainly deserved. I am not a fanboy/anti-fanboy. I am a pragmatic guy that will use what I believe is the best option, be it RedHat, SuSE or even MS if they could get their act together (not holding my breath). I like the idea of "Free as in speech" software, but it is a preference, not a religion. It just makes my life easier.
RedHat HAS done some very good things for the community. They have also done some very questionable things, and not just the business model change that abandoned all us small users. I don't consider them good or evil, just another company that I would prefer to not do business with at this time because of their past and current policies that alienate small users that want more than Fedora (I do NOT want a new version every 6 freaking months!!!!), and are willing to pay for it. Just not $800+ a year for updates.
There are MANY thousands of people who feel exactly like I do, that RH screwed us over, took our money, changed their business, and left us high and dry. Not that it makes it any better, but MS does this every time they change their EULA or disables a feature. IBM is now the darling of the Linux community, yet 20 years ago it was the bastard. Companies change, and I would be a fool to hold a grudge against a corporation, since board members change all the time.
So, can I forgive? Yes. Will I forget? Doubtful.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I work in sub-200 people environments in switzerland. So my perpspective might differ a lot from yours, but i've found microsoft to offer good value for their money.
1 CHF (Swiss Franc) = 0.80 US$
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.
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.