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Red Hat Dismissing Microsoft, Oracle
Robert writes to tell us Red Hat's CEO Matthew Szulik is encouraging customers to take Microsoft up on their support voucher offer for Novell's rival Linux system in order to "get the issue over with." Dismissing the impact that the Microsoft-Novell deal has had on business, Szulik is just happy to see customers taking Microsoft's money. "Szulik also dismissed Oracle Corp's attempt to under-cut it on Linux support on similar grounds, insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend."
insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend
It's sort of ironic that this has been Microsoft's argument again Linux all along. It all comes down to "Total Cost of Ownership" and which vendor's completely made up numbers are more believable (and which "research" firm they've "sponsored").
When Oracle announced that they were going to rebrand and sell Red Hat, most people that posted comments on this site were up in arms over this. Anyone that does business with Oracle would have known how insignificant the announcement was. Dealing with Oracle sucks. I can phone three different sales reps and get three wildly different prices for the exact same configuration. Sometimes the pricing depends on how their products are going to be used, sometimes not. Without getting into more specifics, I can think of no other word for their sales department, other than 'greasy'. The only reason we still buy some products from Oracle is because we have to.
For all their warts, doing business with Red Hat is a dream compared to Oracle.
Indeed. Big companies are where the money is, and if they're not a linux shop already, they're nervous of unknown companies like Novell and Redhat coming along and selling something to replace their unix/windows/whatever boxes with.
With Oracle/Microsoft behind it, buying linux looks a bit more attractive.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
It would be at some level in linux's interest to have the distros look at some kind of mutual marketing strategy to help people sort out
:-).
First off, I agree with you 100% about Linux adoption being dependent on clear choices and direction for users that don't have the skills to decide for themselves.
That said, in whose best interest is it? As an example, I'm a Debian guy now, use it for almost everything. But if I decide I want to start a business tomorrow selling PC's with Linux the first thing I'm going to do is settle on two, maybe three configurations. I'll sell a light server (console tools only, light on resources, perfect for a firewall), a "GUI" server (Ubuntu, maybe Etch with all the GUI server tools I can find, perferabbly web based) and a Desktop (Ubunutu out of the box, would have to think about whether or not to install the codecs and binary drivers based on legal issues). Or something like this anyway, I'm not going to actually sell PCs and don't have business model ( as if you couldn't tell
My point is that I don't think you'll ever get the "guru" community to give up making new distros and promoting them over each other. What we'll hopefully see is Vendors picking a few distros, or one, to work with and then offering various levels of software for a) different hardware configs (server vs. laptop) and different needs (media PC, desktop, server, etc). Using different distros can actually help this process as a lot of them are created already for specific purposes.
Even though MS sells all their choices and (somewhat IMHO) clearly labels them users are still confused by the choices. Heck even with XP I always have people asking "What's the difference between home or pro?, Tablet and media center?", etc. And sure, they could get the info themselves by looking it up, but I think users will always ask a friend or a guy in a best buy before they'll take the time to look it up themselves.
Bottom line is, no one "owns" all and everything "Linux" at the moment so it's in the best interest of those who want to sell it to trim the choices down for users.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Oracle is absolutely full of sh*t. I've been to LinuxWorld, I've been to OpenWorld, and I've seen their PHP talent. As someone who's supported and developed PHP for 8 years (since php3) I encourage you to maintain a strong distrust for this company's claims about their software. Ellison is not to be trusted with application software, just look at how many application stacks he's wasted. At this point, Larry is a has-been yacht salesman. The sales team at Red Hat will decimate ORCL in the next few years. Wait and watch. Heck, even Cisco is on the JBoss+RedHat bandwagon (CAS/CAM/NAC/MARS/etc.) and soon all if Cisco's clients will be too.
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Microsoft dominates the IT industry, so most IT professionals are comfortable with Microsoft. You will only recommend a product you already know.
I work at a company with eight developers. I am one of two that can install, administer, and program for Linux. The other six have only ever used Windows. Our customers all run Windows in their offices. We do everything on Windows because Windows is ubiquitous, not out of any inherent virtues it has over Red Hat. It's simply cheaper to buy product licenses as necessary and reuse existing Windows -only software than to train six developers on Linux, migrate our existing software, install Linux on our existing servers, and convince our customers to migrate. Or in other words, the technical case for Linux is never even discussed because at least for right now the business case is weak.
I have to imagine the same thing is true in other companies, too. Microsoft wins because it's already present, and because more developers and administrators know how to use it. That doesn't necessarily say anything about its superiority (or inferiority) as a product.