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How Many SUSE Subscriptions Can You Get For $240M?
itwbennett writes "According to an SD Times article, Microsoft is almost through passing out the infamous subscription certificates for SUSE Enterprise Linux that it purchased for $240 million as part of its investment in Novell. According to the article, Microsoft says that 'a total of 475 customers have used an unspecified number of coupons.' Blogger Brian Proffitt calculates that 'if indeed just 475 customers have received these coupons, then Microsoft has essentially subsidized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) deployments to an average tune of US$505,263.16 per customer.'"
You know, It's funny how often those 4 coincide...
Microsoft Corporation announced today that customers who deploy their server solutions can save over $400,000 when compared to deploying a solution based on SUSE Linux.
MG
Each company could be count as one customer, but theirs hundreds of users could count in the price of the license.
OpenSUSE is free: http://www.opensuse.org/en/ - we run it here.
SUSE is not free. However, when your Oracle server has decided to keel over on the development server, and you've spent a couple of hours now trying to find out why, you really begin to wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to pay for the version with support and be able to call someone (OpenSUSE isn't an officially supported Oracle platform, so we couldn't even call them) and have them fix it.
> People have "moral qualms" against marketing?
Yes. Little things like lying and fraud bother some people.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your posts are usually insightful and this one is on the whole no exception. However, I have to comment on the "The[y] could just have just as easily chosen Linux": that statement totally forgets the monopolies Microsoft has been able to build in the last fifteen years (legally or otherwise) and the "traps" that were built on top of those monopolies. Most operating system customers _cannot_ choose non-MS products, and that is not just because the competing products themselves aren't good.
The OS and document format monopoly, the IE-trap that many companies unknowingly stepped into ten years ago and the well documented anti-interoperability stance that seemed to be the M.O. at Microsoft for some time... These things may not be illegal (although I expect they may be in combination) but I have no problem calling them immoral.
In any case saying that customers have a choice is bollocks. They had a choice ten years ago, and hopefully will again after five or ten years... Let's hope so.
You're being very antagonistic (fine, some of what the other poster(s) have written are BS).
But let me help explain why there is a huge anti-marketing sentiment amongst a large subset of the readers of slashdot.
1. Slashdot readers tend to be very analytical. We like to get all the facts and make a decision based on those facts. Marketing often obscures the facts by which we could make informed decisions.
2. A lot of us work in product development (typically software, but not always). We see marketing staff pulling in 2-3 times what we make (or more) while not actually producing anything of value (according to how we ascribe value). We see marketing staff get promoted while seeing them goof off most of the day. Some of it may be sour grapes, some of it may be jealousy, some of it may just be a lack of respect for people who don't seem to work hard -- but in any case, it's hard for the typical slashdotter to accord respect to someone who produces nothing.
3. Some of us have been burnt, professionally, by marketing people. Deliverables are marketed that have no hope of being implemented, etc.
4. Most slashdotters feel that their work stands for itself. Most people in marketing self-promote; this runs contrary to the values of most nerds. It's frustrating to see a marketing person take the credit (and the accolades) when a lot of hard work was done by the development teams.
Maybe you just need to accept the fact that some people hate the idea of marketing. Getting bent out of shape about it isn't going to do you any good.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As someone who has worked in marketing, technology, and product development... I'd say you summed up the situation pretty well. On a forum for marketing pros, you could reverse most of your points and get a decent picture of how marketing folks view programmers and product devs.
I think the key problem is noted in your #2: "We see marketing staff pulling in 2-3 times what we make (or more) while not actually producing anything of value (according to how we ascribe value)." Everybody has different opinions of value. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Which came first, the product, or the demand for the product? A marketer is supposed to deliver demand for a product; a good marketer will do it on a phenomenal level, and possibly even without resorting to deceptive tactics. But, without the product, there is nothing for the marketer to do. They need each other.
Should marketers make 2x or 3x the pay? Depends. A senior, proven marketer should make 3x more than a middling developer. But a senior, proven engineer should have some kind of parity. Also, marketing is inherently riskier: if you fail to produce demand and therefore sales, you're likely to lose the account, if not your job. But engineers, in my experience, tend to be more insulated from sales ebbs. (emphasis on "tend")
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I don't think that's always the case. What if you have a good product that no one knows about? There's a lack of information in the market, which marketing can help fix.
The problem is dishonesty in marketing, not marketing itself.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai