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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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itsatrap
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.
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.
My blog
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".
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?
That chart is only for webservers. Debian has nowhere near that much of the Linux market overall, though distros derived from it might.
I rarely use Linux, but by what means are you judging stability?
I can keep a linux system up and running for years with a handful of services, and I'm horrid at unix. For instance, I know "dd", ":q", ":wq", "i", "a" from VI, that's IT.
On the other hand, I'm pretty much a windows expert. I can do pretty much anything with a windows machine EXCEPT keep it running for more than a month. I'm not talking windows expert as in the guy in your family that helps with PCs, I'm speaking as the guy who helps the IT department when they get stuck.
How about hackability? I don't think I've ever seen a rooted Linux machine (but as I said, I don't get a ton of exposure to Linux workstations, maybe I don't know?)--yet I find it rare when dealing with a PC over 6 months old to not have a rootkit or some such garbage installed. I keep a Linux machine at home and won't do financial transactions on any of my 4 windows PCs or this work pc I'm on now.
I admit I'm talking different uses. PCs I've used have generally had apps installed and uninstalled over time, and are in a pretty flakey condition within a year. The Linux pc's I've set up are generally fire-and-forget, but as I said, I do run one linux laptop where I load bunches of apps, delete bunches of apps, etc and it's still crashless (well, apps lock up sometimes and I'm sometimes not good enough to shut them down without rebooting the laptop, but it could be done if I was better with Linux.)
Also: a "Good" windows admin will schedule reboots daily or weekly. I've never heard of a "Good" linux admin doing that. Doesn't that alone say a lot about general stability?
Did you have some different definition of stability than uptime (no crashes, no reboots) and a lack of degradation over time?
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.
"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.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.