Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't think that there will be many customers that are already running Linux and purchasing support from Red Hat switching to Oracle Linux support, but I think the Oracle support of Linux and their IP indemnification of Linux is overall good for Linux adoption in the enterprise.
Red Hat's new mascot = the ostrich.
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.
Am I the only one that, upon reading the title, thought about how difficult a decision it must have been to fire both Microsoft and Oracle at the same time?
load "$",8,1
Company dismisses competitors. News at 11.
Is bigger than your distro... Frankly, while I can understand why the people who run one distro want to show that they are better than the other distros... it is one of the things that holds linux back a bit. You get the diversity of development that comes from the different groups producing distros, but to the public who might want to try linux, it gets very confusing to sort between them if they are not technical. I mean you look at ubuntu's "linux for human beings" which implies that the other distros are not for them... And before anyone mentions that vista has six versions, they are all from MS, clearly enough delineated with a dot chart, and there are sales people there ready to steer you to the most expensive version. 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 the differences between them so they can pick the one right for them, at least on the desktop side. The server people for the most part are learned enough to figure it out.
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.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I just know how this is going to turn out:
*ring* *ring*
Customer: Hi, I'm having a problem getting apache to start automatically when my server boots.
Tech Support: Oh, apache can't do that. You should switch to IIS. It will start automatically.
Re-brand and sell Red Hat? Don't think so. Sell support for Redhat, yes. That's not the same as re-branding it.
The big problem with Oracle selling support for Redhat is this. If a customer discovers a bug in Redhat that requires a code fix and reports it to Oracle, who gets to fix it, Redhat or Oracle? "Oracle" I hear you say, because they have access to the source code.
That's all well and good, but what guarantees do you have as an Oracle customer that Oracle's fix is going to be included in Redhat's source tree? Answer: none! Redhat aren't beholden to you or Oracle, because you don't have a support contract with them.
So the next time you run up2date or upgrade to the next Redhat errata, what happens? Your application breaks again because your Oracle specific patches aren't in the Redhat code tree.
The only solution for Oracle is to run their own patch servers so that with every errata Redhat ships they can apply their own code fixes before allowing you (their customer) to update. What a headache for Oracle! Think of the overhead they have to swallow. The admin costs. The server environment costs. The developer costs. The QA costs - assuming they bother to QA the Redhat updates after they've changed them (cos Redhat won't).
And Oracle are supposed to do all this and run a profitable support service for less money than Redhat? Bollocks they can!
Enjoy your unified Oracle support while you can, because I don't see it lasting very long.
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.