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Novell's Linux Business Takes a Seat At the Grown-Up Table

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the happy-corporate-overlords dept.

CNet is reporting that while Novell still has a long way to go before they start making Red Hat nervous, they have at least gotten a seat at the grown-up table. Reporting 31% year-over-year growth in their Linux business, Novell attributes very little of this success to their Microsoft partnership, looking to their Redmond connection mainly for interoperability work. "Novell's core Linux business is growing. By 'core,' I mean that our non-Microsoft- related Linux business is growing. These are Suse Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions sold directly by the Novell sales force or by our channel partners, without any Microsoft certificates or Microsoft salespeople involved. However, the important thing is that our total revenue picture for Suse Linux Enterprise is growing, as our customers increasingly don't distinguish. As we've said before, Microsoft offers an alternate avenue for purchasing subscriptions but we are focused on growth of the whole category."

7 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Frosty Posts by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Go Novell. Competition = good

    1. Re:Frosty Posts by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That last point is sort of irrelevant, its open source.

      If the NSA wants to develop security frameworks they obviously can, and the main kernel devs seem happy to incorporate their work into the kernel.

      If you have some reason to not trust SELinux, much as i hate it, do tell.

  2. more than a third of a billion by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so that $367 million Microsoft paid Novell in 2007 alone had nothing to do with profitablity and growth. glad to hear it

    1. Re:more than a third of a billion by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Having worked with Red Hat and Novell as well as HP, Sun and IBM on *NIX, I have to give Novell credit on their support. They tend to go the extra mile and I even really like their documentation better than Red Hat's. Red Hat's kickstart has fewer issues than AutoYaSt, but YaST as a tool to manage servers, plus Novell's Zenworks Linux Management is awesome in capabilities. It seems to just be easier to make things happen on SUSE for me.

      But, now at my current job, it is all RHEL and HPUX........with a few older sun boxen tossed into the mix.

  3. Re:dislike this company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fine - dislike the company, but you really need to get away from the FUD and the fear of microsoft and realize that they are doing nothing of the sort (subverting the open source community). you can hate mono, hate gnome, hate evolution, hate kde, you can hate opensuse/suse linux, whatever, but you can't say that novell hasn't done a lot for the community -- they've donated TONS of code (opened up all of SUSE Linux, app armor, yast, hula, etc. and have done tons to go after folks who try to hurt the community and/or open source (gifting patents to OIN, going after SCO, etc.).

    stop pushing FUD and realize that they, just like other companies are in the business of making money and despite that, they continue to help the community. I'm not saying that I necessarily love their MS agreements either, but I don't think they're going to let MS poison open source and/or hurt the community...

    appreciate your comments, but honestly am a bit sick of some of the novell bashing, most of which is based more on fear than on reality.

  4. Re:dislike this company by walterbyrd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Microsoft wants to hedge bets on many levels and getting any stream of income from open source would be good for them.

    I don't think that is what the deal is about. Msft's business model does not work unless msft can control the standard. Msft wants linux to be legally encumbered. Msft is getting Novell to agree that all other version of linux are violating msft patents. This is supposed to create one legal version of Linux, and all the rest are illegal. Why do you think msft is sponsoring the Acacia lawsuit against Redhat?

    Right now, there is no way msft can kill off linux in the same manner that msft has killed off msft's proprietary competitors. But, if there is only one linux, and this linux is commercial product, then it becomes much easier for msft to kill off, or at least contain the problem.

  5. Re:dislike this company by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Novell execs do what novell execs think is in their own best interest. Sometimes that means helping Linux/foss, other times not. Novell execs may presently wants to linux to succeed - but only for novell, not for everybody. Bottom line, novell execs are looking at their own bottom line - whether that helps, or hurts, linux is inconsequential. Novell execs are not in business for the sake of any kind of idealism.

    Whatever criticisms people have against msft, you have to give msft credit for being strategic. Right now, msft is teaming with novell to defeat redhat via msft's patent scam. Once redhat has been defeated, msft can turn their attention to other linux distributors, including novell. Let me remind you, msft has a long history of turning against their business partners.