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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?""
OK which one of you would cost me less in TCO.
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"Lucy, you got some 'xplaining to do!"
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
itsatrap
That was fairly contentless.
If you didnt read it and pretended 2 marketers yakking, it was about as interesting.
Well, that and Virtualization is the next key word. Add that to Web 2.0 and Beowulf cluster.
Zzzzzz
here's a $100,000,000 bone
the guy sounds like an MS soundbite now
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
We did not do a full review as part of the process. [Microsoft] may have; we did not. I think your question was based on an assumption that we did a deep review, and we didn't.By a full review there, I believe he means a code review, to look for patent violations, before they signed a deal to protect their customers from possible patent violations. So he bought something, without actually doing due diligence to find out if they actually needed it. That's like buying flood damage insurance when you live on a mountain, it's not spending company money responsibly.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
and tries to sell virtualized Linux on a Win server and right after him another man walkes into the bar and tries to sell virtualized Windows on a Linux server. The barkeeper says "Get the f*ck outta here, both of you!".
Bad joke, eh? At least now you get the deeper meaning of the Novell/Microsoft deal.
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.
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.
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Well, if you are not happy with Novell, you can always migrate to Debian, the second largest GNU/Linux distribution.
From the Netcraft's GNU/Linux distribution share stats:
RH - 34%,
Debian - 25%
Suse - 11 %
Did the patent review turn up any possible violations of Microsoft patents in the Linux source code? We absolutely have made no admissions of any infringements, period, from our point of view. No admissions.
Slimy toad. The question should to follow this should have been. "Are you personally aware of any violations of Microsoft patents having been identified as present in Linux code." None of this wishy washy "I haven't admitted to anything" nonsense. Bloody admit to it or state for the record that you aren't sitting on something that you'll "admit" later.
And what company is going to deploy Linux just so it can virtualize Windows? Why wouldn't they save the time and expertise (and finger pointing) and just deploy Windows as the host and Windows as the guest?
But it was Novell's CEO who said that he lost deals to Microsoft, again and again and again. I don't often see Microsoft complaining about losing deals to Linux.
You might want to check your email server logs. It seems that 95%+ of the businesses we deal with are running Exchange.
And Novell's marketshare has been in decline for years.
Somehow that doesn't add up to "got lucky on a few".
WMWare already offers something like that.
And Linux, when administered by someone who does NOT know what he's doing is no more stable than Windows. But Windows can be as stable as Linux when you have a competent administrator. In your scenario, the company would be paying for Linux experts AND Windows experts. Why? Why not just spend the money and get competent Windows administraters?
www.vmware.com
It's even free (as in beer) now. And you don't have to tweak the guest OS. It runs clean. We use it all the time.
So you called Microsoft out of desperation because you had no idea how to get Novell out of the cesspit it has found itself in? Why don't you just say that? No one calls the company who is taking business off you hand over fist and is the source of all your woes unless you're effectively conceding defeat. There's no deal you can do with them. They're just going to laugh at you and have you on.
Yet again, we get this virtualisation nonsense which seems to be Novell's answer to everything these days. In what possible way is virtualisation a stumbling block to anything?! Somebody, tell me. We've been able to virtualise Windows quite happily under VMware for years without any trouble - no thanks to Microsoft. Xen won't yet virtualise Windows, but it can, and when the right hardware support is in place it will do without any help from Microsoft.
Again - what on Earth is the problem apart from your own business and your own strategy?!
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You wait until Xen works with the hardware it needs to make virtualising Windows possible, or in the meantime, you grab a copy of VMware and install Windows or Linux on it? You could even partner with VMware. Fancy that. *Puts phone down*
That's not the way Microsoft views it.
From Microsoft's perspective, absolutely nothing, because they don't care about interoperability. They must be doing something right, because its worked for them. All the useful Java and .Net interoperability software is already being sold successfully via smaller software companies, and most are doing quite well out of it. It's a pity that Novell isn't a part of this, isn't making any money out of this and can't put Mono to some actual good use.
To do with what exactly? Cluestick: people are already doing it.
So the deal was about interoperability, what there is to actually talk about, and Microsoft wanted to talk to you about patents and IP and you agreed, which serves their own ends? Brilliant. What a bunch of clueless idiots. I'm sure you're now part of another long running office joke in Redmond.
And you thought that gave you the upper hand, and you never once asked why Microsoft were willing to go along with something that they just didn't need to do?
" I picked up the phone and called Kevin Turner, the COO at Microsoft. I knew Kevin when he was the CIO at Wal-Mart."
Good ol' boy. Just trying to figure out to make a bunch of money. It has nothing to do with customers or Novell surviving.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft wasn't acutely aware of exactly that! They understand very well that they win deals due to FUD about Linux IP and indemnity issues, and that is exactly why they entered into this agreement.
This deal is serving as a major catalyst to make that very problem worse, not better!
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?
What a weirdly constructed phrase. If I was the customer I would say, wtf are you talking about? Or I might say, get the fuck out of here, I'm not interested in your virtualization marketing-speak.
What I need as a customer is for things to become mre clean, simple, consistent, stable, secure, etc, I don't need yet another layer of shit on top of the layers of poop that are already there.
If I'm a CIO, that's what I'm dealing with: "What are you guys doing to make my life easier to make those things work together?" I saw virtualization as a key to us being able to do that in a different manner than we have in the past.
Why? So instead of two dual core systems I can now buy one quad core? Except the two dual core systems would always run smoother because there's less resource contention?
Is virtualization really what the market demands nowadays??
Is my Samba server that's been running in a back room for two years, and only ever gets rebooted when the power's out long enough to drain the UPS (which has happened maybe twice during that time.) Didn't even need a reboot when we changed its IP address. Did I mention it's had NO problems since being initially configured?
Parent poster has it dead on about uptime...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
One of my co-workers spent the summer working for Microsoft on a very cool project (IronPython). During his stay there he heard from Microsoft lawyers during a presentation that Microsoft has approached Novell numerous times over licensing concerning .NET patents during the last year or two. Each time they were rebuffed by Novell. He got the impression Microsoft was very displeased about this. In their minds after all, .NET *is* their IP and Novell was flouting it. One has to wonder what really changed Novell's mind about dealing with Microsoft in a patent covenant relationship.
If you're not rebooting Windows monthly then you're not keeping up with your security patches. Simple as that.
Last time I rebooted my FC4 box was about five months ago after a kernel upgrade.
We never changed our position. All I cared about was, I lost a deal with a large retailer to Microsoft for the first time about 12 or 18 months ago. It was going to be an all-Linux deal, and I lost it because they were unduly influenced, in my opinion, to be fearful of these [IP and indemnity issues]. From my point of view that was really too bad, because Linux lost. Then I watched it happen three more times.
Perhaps he would have been better off reminding them that Microsoft customers don't get IP idemnity either. IIRC, Microsoft's customers were sued by Timeline for using code which Microsoft improperly integrated into SQL server. Then, the Eolas suit caused Microsoft to issue a patch which removed functionality from Internet Explorer. I am not aware of Microsoft compensating its customers in either case.
I think Ron really failed Novell with this recent Microsoft deal. Actions speak louder than words; no matter what he says, he's sent a clear message to the world that Novell believes Linux infringes on Microsoft IP. Microsoft agreed to the deal because they knew it had a strategic advantage against Linux, not because they wanted to help Novell.
It never was about IP - his lost customers were bluffing. He might have won the deals had he been a better salesman:
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