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VMware Looks To Acquire Novell's SUSE Unit
minutetraders writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, VMware is attempting to acquire Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business. This move would give VMware a full stack of enterprise software and allow it to establish itself as a full-blown infrastructure and software vendor in direct competition with Red Hat."
The WSJ report is behind a paywall, but it's accessible in full through a Google search.
- with one exception - dump Miguel. Please. Mono is something you see a doctor about. Let's keep it that way.
I had previously noticed that this works for all WSJ articles. Does anyone know why? Is Google paying the WSJ for content?
They should acquire Mandriva. It's just as good an Enterprise distro and casn be had for much less.
Discovers that it now "accidentally" "owns" "Linux", and GRRRRRAARGH! BALLMER SMASH PUNY KERNEL!
You read it here first, although doubtless many more times below. It's coming. I can feel it coming in the air tonight (drum break).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is great news! VMWare is growing and a fantastic product as is SuSE but Novell just couldn't do the job and didn't have the funds. I would love to see what VMWare's budget can do for SuSE.
This news seems to me to be another bad omen. We run NetWare, Border Manager, ZENworks and Groupwise and have been very happy for many years. However, Novell seems to be a ship without a rudder and as the IT Director will cause me to consider other alternatives, including Microsoft.
Conservative, mod down for violating
It seems that patent portfolios is holding up the sale of Novell. http://gigaom.com/2010/09/16/novells-patents-are-complicating-its-sale/
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
"with one exception - dump Miguel"
Not Bill Gates.
Not Steve Ballmer.
Not Steve Jobs.
There hasn't been a single person who has done more damage to Linux than that miserable piece of shit Miguel.
Vmware is by far the best in class virtualization product and on top of that they have made it very easy to use. I think they could really do great things with suse in addition to Zimbra and their document collaboration suit they can be a big MS competitor.
"Don't Panic!"
... does that mean we'd eventually see versions of vCenter Server and vCenter Client that run on something other than Windows? That would be nice.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Microsoft is giving away their shiny new hypervisor with their operating systems. What would be more fair than for VMWare to give away operating systems with their hypervisor?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
get rid of Novell .
get rid of any M$ Corp influence
tell Vmware to go play in the fast lane in the fog
and get SuSE back to rights once again
note i said SuSE not OpenSuse or OpenSUSE
No matter how much VMWare is willing to pay, Novell can't afford to lose that part of the company. They are already hardly relevant. They need SuSe and the clout they have to make sure that they have a suitable place to run all of their other software. I'd guess they'd have to get the whole company instead of just the SuSe division.
If Novell sold Suse, then that would leave them with only NDS, "Novell Directory Services." I don't see them winning against AD and roll-your-own LDAP. I thought the whole point of the Suse acquisition was to join the area of dominant development in PC OSs (i.e. GNU/Linux), as Netware continued to fade away. Without that, I don't see them as viable going forward. Well, they could close up shop and retire to the beach with a couple of Coronas. But then again, the boys from Provo rather have a Sprite instead.
An interesting move since VMware's flagship virtualization product (ESX) is based on Red Hat, yet the current release of that product is the last that will support using the full-blown ESX with the privileged (red-hat-like) guest. They are moving to only support the bare hypervisor product (ESXi).
What about UNIX copyrights and patents? Will they go to VMware, or to the other buyer which will buy the rest of the old Novell?
If VMware buys SuSE that will be a blow to Xen.
Red Hat has already switched to KVM, and Ubuntu doesn't provide a Xen Dom0 kernel. If SuSE goes to a virtualization vendor that competes with products built on Xen, what options will be left for enterprise distros that provide Xen Dom0 support? Oracle Unbreakable Linux?
Just another proletarian malcontent.
VMware has a Linux vcenter in beta..... http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/vcserver_linux
VMware owns Zimbra now also. A Zimbra VM or some other SuSE distribution might provide some interesting options for trials/migrations of email.
At almost every level of the "Windows" UI/GUI almost anything can be exposed: to modify, append-to or straight-up block it completely.
Even a fairly simple language like AutoHotKey: (Script interpreted by an on-the-fly C++ compiler) can do amazing things with DLLCALL and RegisterCallBack.
Or even some of the work by BlackWingCat : BlackWingCat's KDW API Wrapper & Tools or OldCigarettes : OldCigarettes Windows 2000 XP API Wrapper Pack (OCW), which do API wrapping on Binaries like ntdll.dll, user32.dll, kernel32.dll and more -- which add Function calls into Win2K that only Exist in XP. Which enable software and games on Win2K that claim they need XP+.
Don't they know they can just download it for free?
$ 2 or 3 mil ought to be enought.
Not sure HOW important it is...but SUSE is the only Linux Guest supported by Microsoft's Hyper-V.
I can see VMWare either using this to boost linux/vmware solutions to MS people (see your own gods even agree suse is "the best")
OR
To de-certify it, and leave MS with no certified Linux distributions (thus slowing/stopping those with Linux needs from migrating to Hyper-V).
Personally I've migrated a few servers in our lab to hyper-v from vmware for testing/evaluation. And in the mid-sized area (SAN, but still cash poor for good solutions!) it supports live migration, and the like for free which is a big plus. But really low end (no SAN) VMWare still wins, and high end (both sides, all the pay-for tools) VMWare wins, but there is a middle ground I can see Hyper-V is gaining some ground in.
There's been a lot of talk about Novell since initial offer to buy it and it seems people haven't checked Novell's site at least 10 years. There's a long list of products on their site http://www.novell.com/products/ beyond Netware, Groupwise and SUSE.
So beside Netware which has been long dead and used mostly by companies too lazy to migrate to Linux there are great products based off eDirectory and running on SUSE. Take there new Zenworks endpoint management, Identity manager, Platespin just start off. Anyone had a look at application virtualization? They bought a good number of good product companies and are integrating them with their other products. Groupwise is an excellent mail system, stable and flexible, and would be so much better if they'd finally finish the design of the client which is still stuck with one leg in nineties, feels like unfinished work. All of services that once were on Netware have been moved to linux years ago and work fine. SUSE is though a platform of choice for most of their products and I can't see how could they sell just SUSE, no way.
They do however need to fire their marketing department.