Novell CEO Gives Behind the Scenes Account of Microsoft Deal

raffe writes "Here is a Q&A with Ron Hovsepian CEO of Novell. He describes 'a love-hate thing' between the two companies." From the article: "This past May, I picked up the phone and called Kevin Turner, the COO at Microsoft. I knew Kevin when he was the CIO at Wal-Mart. I said, "Kevin, I'd like to have a conversation about what the customer needs. If you could put back on your old hat as a customer, if I came in and started talking to you about virtualization on Linux, and this Microsoft guy showed up and started talking to you about virtualization on Windows, what would you say to us?""

Comments

What I still don't understand is ...

[khasim]

So, Novell's lost 4 deployments to Microsoft ..... and now Microsoft wants to help Novell get a chance at future deployments?

Is this something that makes sense in CEO-land?

Because it sure doesn't make sense from where I'm at.

If I were Ron H I'd say one of these things:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd trust him more if he said one of these statments; since they at least sound plausable.

- "In one contract I closed more Linux revenue at a higher profit margin than we make in most of a year; and as a new CEO it makes me look good regardless of what it does to Novell long term" or

- "Oracle's too strong on the lobbying side in the federal government business for us to compete with; so we needed someone like Microsoft to partner with there because Microsoft has good ties to lobbyists thanks to Gates's dad's company where brahamoff got his lobbying job." or

- "Yes, there really is Microsoft IP there - here are the patent numbers so you can see that we really are protecting you"

But instead he's just spewing Micrsoft FUD that this has something to do with what customers want - while it's pretty obvious looking around that ZERO customers respect what Novell has done here.

Microsoft uses software patents against Linux

[pieterh]

The key point from the article is that Novell accuses Microsoft of spreading patent FUD to kill Linux deals.

Software patents are such a fantastic weapon for monopolists who have lots of lawyers. No surprise Microsoft is pushing so hard to get them legalised in Europe.

Re:There ya go, Ron Hovsepian admits to misconduct

[Mostly a lurker]

So he bought something, without actually doing due diligence to find out if they actually needed it.

I have listened to this argument over and over. I do not buy it. What is the appropriate due diligence to know if you are going to be the target of bogus litigation? The US legal system is a complete mess, and getting worse. The assumption that you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong is unbelievably naive. There is nothing irresponsible about taking out insurance against one of the biggest business risks corporations face today.

Re:www.vmware.com

[toadlife]

"Theoretically I suppose that would be true. But competent Windows administrators deem to be quite rare compared to decent enough Linux administrators."I work in a mostly Windows environment and consider myself to be a competent Windows administrator (I'm also competent in *NIX though), and I would almost agree with this.

I would say that competant Windows is no more rare than competant Linux help. They both roughly as rare, as in the case of both Windows and Linux, an admin needs to have a clue as to what's going on under the hood to be considered competent. The problem with finding Windows help is that there is a lot more wok involved in separating the wheat from the chaff.

In finding Windows help, I think companies make the mistake of simply not offering enough money, as they base their salary offering on the "average" salary of Windows administrators. The salaries of the incompetent monkeys in the pool of Windows admins bring down that average quite a bit, which leads companies to falsely believe that a competant Windows administrator costs less than a Linux administrator.

Thus companies end up getting what they pay for when they hire Windows help.