Waiting on Red Hat's response to Microsoft
In a recent CNET interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Ballmer calls out two "primary forces" for Microsoft in the enterprise: Oracle and Linux. These are the things that keep Microsoft's Ballmer up at night.
It's odd, then, that neither Red Hat nor Novell seem to be doing much to take Microsoft on directly, except in the Unix-to-Linux competition with Windows that either Red Hat or Microsoft is winning, depending on whom you ask.
Novell depends too heavily on Microsoft's Suse Linux coupon program to aggressively stomp on the hand that is feeding it (and it's feeding Novell quite well), but what is Red Hat's excuse?
Historically, Red Hat has simply lacked the resources to go after Microsoft. Red Hat has always run a very lean operation, a necessity now but especially back when its subscription model hadn't yet started to deliver recognizable revenue that it could actually spend. Those days are over, and Red Hat now throws off a lot of profit.
Yet Red Hat still seems content to tangle with Microsoft at the field level with a "Linux is better than Windows if you're leaving Unix," while in the CNET interview Ballmer outlines a much more robust competitive strategy against Linux:
(Our EMC) partnership makes us stronger versus our Linux-based alternatives on the desktop. Part of the way we compete with open source desktop stuff is by having stronger total value-add.
We can't beat Linux on initial price. So, the notion of being able to go and say, here's a solution that you can really use to do fantastic security, fantastic data loss prevention from the client through the back-end, that's a powerful part of our proposition.
This refers to desktop Linux, but Microsoft's strategy everywhere against Linux is the same: a broad, value-adding ecosystem enabling Microsoft to offer holistic solutions. Red Hat largely continues to deliver point solutions ("Need an application server? We've got the best one. Need an operating system? Ours is best"), missing the market for overarching solutions, a market that Microsoft has mastered.
Going forward, I believe that Red Hat must expand its solution offerings if it wants to take market share from Microsoft. The Unix-to-Linux "low hanging fruit" won't last forever. When it's gone, the biggest barrier to Red Hat's continued growth will be Microsoft. Unless Red Hat starts acting now to build up a holistic response to Microsoft's value proposition, including the desktop, Red Hat will eventually struggle to grow.
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
They are doing just fine.
Let Microsoft try to be all things to all people. They will still make tons of money following the GE model of being #1 or #2 in any market they are in.
As business slowly breaks away from it's dependance on Windows Red Hat will pick up more business, like Apple the key to to get to a certian size, then do a big push. Red Hat is not qiute in that position yet.
Who says it's Red Hat or Novell keeping Microsoft awake at night? I would would argue its Ubuntu. Ubuntu is free, easy to use, has great, low cost support from Canonical if you need it, and the community is more willing to help newbies on simple to advanced topics than Microsoft, Red Hat or Suse combined. Ease of use wise, it's just as easy or easier to use than Windows, and it comes with built-in support for Microsoft Office based documents with the Open Office.org office suite. The only reason that Ubuntu isn't overtaking Microsoft or Apple is that (for some unknown reason) Canonical doesn't wish to market itself as a competitor. If they were willing to jump in with a serious marketing campaign, I think you'd see some serious inroads on Windows market share. Apple still has the reputation for over-priced hardware which is currently holding them back. Ubuntu has no such detractors, and can push their advantages of being free from viruses and spyware. The same advantages which have helped Apple achieve its current market share levels.
You can get RH and SuSE for free as well, and pay for support if you need it, and their forums are no worse than Ubuntu's.
A huge difference is that Canonical does very little real development, they just collect packages and throw them out the door. RH and Novell do more Linux development in a week than Canonical does in a year. That makes a lot of difference and it differentiates them. For example, compare the features of Suse's open office, with Ubuntu's.
How is it, if all they do is package, that Ubuntu is known for running on more laptops than any other distro?
I've got plenty of criticisms for SuSE (every version beginning with 10 and would they just fix the SVN server already?) and Fedora's about as user friendly as a kick in the teeth. If I have a criticism of Ubuntu it's that it's becoming too OS X like in that you increasingly have the super-simple config tools and the command line and that's it.
Now, ah yes, OpenSUSE 11.1, inserts wrong path for NFS4 mounts and I have to go fix it in fstab anyway. What's the point in an advanced config tool if it's broken? Or is it OpenSUSE marching to the beat of its own drum again and that path would be fine if I was running OpenSUSE instead Fedora on the server (which I'm not because I need SVN to actually work)? It was certainly the case before.
It can come close to out of the box support for laptops to others, especially with regards to wireless.
Ubuntu is not user friendly, it just takes the MS path: "We know what is right for you".
Ubuntu has a lot of hype and very little substance. It does have potential and may someday be a true contender, but not today and likely not for at least 2 more years.
Given that Ubuntu was the first distro to provide any decent support for laptop at all, I suppose you expect me to believe that they just got that from all the other distros and that the other distros took nothing back at all.
PS. Did I not just say: "If I have a criticism of Ubuntu it's that it's becoming too OS X like in that you increasingly have the super-simple config tools and the command line and that's it."
Try to read my comments before you rewords parts and spit them back at me.
It's apples and oranges.
They've also got a much lower cost of doing business internally.
Canonical throws it ugly brown package out the door every 6 months come hell or high water. Both usually happen, and it paradoxically keeps them further behind the curve of more professional distros.
Ubuntu is at the front of the distros for publicity, it's free to all who want it, it's user friendly(I've been using it for 2 months, direct convert from Windows), it's a great first step and the forums aren't filled with haters. In fact, while I was using the Ubuntu forums to whet my appetite, I didn't run into a single Linux "expert". I just used the forums to figure out how to do simple tasks, how to set up my antivirus program and the reasons for doing so, how to actually be part of a community.
Actually, that's something you may want to learn, how to be around people.
Exactly!
It is all hype, and nothing but hype. That is all they have.
You can throw juvenile terms around like hater, but calling me a hater doesn't give you any credibility.
You'd be a terrible General.
Start reading some Sun Tzu Matt: All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.
Linux's biggest folly has been the fact that the power nerds developing for it have just recently discovered that making ease of use and snazzy design are essential to selling any product in the tech market today, yet they still lack the essential ingredient of making a complete computing solution. Selling a complete solution that addresses many markets and can be quantifiable when compared to Windows and OS X servers is the biggest road block still facing the Linux world.
Red Hat and Novell are the only two players in the game with enough money and pull to initiate this type of consolidation withing the Linux world and market Linux on a global scale; and if they don't do it soon than the numbers will start sliding rapidly as Linux's visibility and 'chic-ness' (at least amongst nerds) slide out of public perception.
With the amount of stuff they still get wrong on a regular basis with what they do, I'd rather they spent all their resources on getting that right first rather than try to put the same resources into more things and making even more mistakes. I'd like to see an option for NFS4 to support all the disparate standards so a Mac can connect directly to a Linux server without issues (yes, BSD, OS X and Linux all disagree on the header size). Getting what there is working now is more important.
If you think being too narrow is going to bury them (in which case you have no idea just how small they still are and how much room there is to grow), being too 'jack of all trades' will bury them faster.
In the meantime, I'll just leave you to ignore just how Linux got into corporations in the first place. Given how much it's improved over just the last five years, it's ridiculous to see yet another person act as though it's a static unchanging thing. After all, all those 'turbo nerds' had to spend a lot of time just making sure everything worked before adding 'snazzy design'. No-one's going to give a monkeys about pretty effects if they have to recompile a kernel module just to see them and having to read kernel docs and root around in config files just to get audio is a pain (that both are of the past impresses me a hell of a lot more than Compiz).
BTW, I thought Sun Tzu was for business nerds?
It is big in the security world, sadly. It annoys me to no end. grrrrr
Red Hat is continually moving with the times and pushing back against things Microsoft is about to do, so I don't think this article is warranted.
Fun post FuturamaFan...and good points. I agree with your point on getting C level execs to pay more attention. Open Source has always been bottom up vs top down...and is a challenge sometimes to reverse.
But what I find interesting is the amount of desktop conversations we've been having since Vista hit. The Vista release has actually pushed the "top down" C level folks to call us and look for a potential "alternative". Not replace everything, but an alternative.
If we could post a "who has contacted us for a MS alternative" list it would fun to see the response. 3 of the Fortune 15, almost every DoD agency who cares about security, etc.
One that comes to mind is a particular DoD agency that has to pay MS 16mill in 2 years because they didnt pay for MS's Software Assurance for his 50k desktops. He is funding my employer a high 6 digit fee to do an analysis/pilot to bring in a Desktop alternative. Thats a fairly good commitment (I think) by the customer.
So while I agree with a lot of the points regarding Linux being a serious replacement for MS (on the desktop), I dont think you can underestimate the venom some executives have for MS...and their willingness to absorb some risk to get off of Windows.
Fun times.
1.) Everyone wants another Microsoft. Red Hat could be it.
Red Hat has no need to be the next Microsoft. Their business model is not like Microsoft's business model at all. Red Hat works on Free and Open Source Software and offers quality products to their customers. It then makes money off of supporting it and/or making those point solutions. Microsoft sells software. All neatly bound up so no one can see it. Then Microsoft sells you support. Two completely differing ideas. Also, Red Hat is a part of a larger community. It works in cooperation within an ecosystem to develop/create software and solutions. It takes from and gives back to the ecosystem. Microsoft is an entity unto itself.
2.) A monolithic software company makes it easier to manage and build "holistic" solutions and offers more value. "This refers to desktop Linux, but Microsoft's strategy everywhere against Linux is the same: a broad, value-adding ecosystem enabling Microsoft to offer holistic solutions."
Red Hat has no need to offer this kind of solution. Red Hat adhears to ISO standards and works more efectively in an interoperable environment because of it. So the "holistic" solution could be Red Hat Servers and Ubuntu Desktops. In all cases it would be about choice. Choice by the consumer not by the software company that wrote the software.
The essential fact is that while MS might be a good solution from bow to stern. It also locks you down to it's propietary way of doing things. This makes it very difficult to have anything else on the boat and continues to keep the customer locked into that "holistic" solution. I can say that I don't want that. I want choice. I want freedom. The "value added" for me is freedom and choice. There is not much you can't do on Linux. That list grows smaller everyday. We should not have a single software compnay offering closed, complete systems. We should have a thriving vibrant ecosystem of software that not only gives low hanging fruit but gives you a choice of which fruit to pick.
Hiko
Why is it tthat such a discussion which originated around MS and linux ends up in some kind of a dog fight between ubuntu,RH,Suse and so on.
This shows clearly why linux is having hard trouble of getting momentum.
My dream - and dont flame me
One distro - anybody remembering LSB initiative ?
One desktop for general use - Gnome and KDE should "only" be skins and some different applications
It is a pitty it all ends up in "my gnome desktop is more beaitull than your kde" etc etc
So gentlemen: Unite - that is the only way of ..
Myself:
running linux for more than a decade. rh,suse,storm2000,arch,debian,slack,... you name it
Have a nice day
- by MacHeads February 5, 2009 10:36 AM PST
- Best setup i made on Linux so far is neither Ubuntu nor Red Hat ...
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by odubtaig February 5, 2009 11:30 AM PST
- You have no idea what you're talking about.
- Like this
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- by odubtaig February 5, 2009 11:34 AM PST
- Hang on, just noticed something.
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(27 Comments)The main reason for that is simple X window which is the layer for all Graphical tasks is SLOOOWWW and way under optimized , i am talking from a MacPro with 16GB point of view with about 14TBs of hard drives of storage . And so far Linux is not even close to Mac os X or Windows in terms of code performance.
Linux being monolithic in terms of kernel too far from modern computing concepts to avoid the performance issues , if you want to scale up things think about BSD ,
So far the best optimization level i have seen is a totally unnoticed distribution , ArchLinux , don't put anything like KDE or Gnome and just Orangebox on it ... it is light enough to run easily and with speed. Though it is a bare bone distribution it does a better job than most distributions ,
I came to realize that the X window system really had major issues of optimization when i decided to go with Arch , it all went from something sluggish and definitely not fit for the end user's perspective to a fast loading highly optimized system. I checked again and again if it was the graphics drivers , it was not the case , if it was the global configuration files neither there ... so it all came down to one conclusion the visualization system on Linux has to go back to formula.
Linux although great in the server space is not at all where it pretends to be on the desktop side. Most of the KDE - Gnome bickering comes from the simple fact users can't cope with something so under optimized as those GUIs . Graphics cards today have little issues in performance in terms of raw power. but keep in mind Xwindow was created in 1984 with the mainframe in mind not the workstation of today.
Xwindow gets little traction in terms of optimization and so far the situation did not evolve much. From the moment it keeps being the main layer for visualization you get a machine with at the core a high performance engine (think v16 12Liters) with a 8000 RPM regime (not the best thing either) but with a transmission of an old 20th hand Packard truck , with a one speed gearbox.
It's slow on some distros but not on others yet somehow you think X is the bottleneck? X on Arch is exactly the same code as X on Red Hat. The main difference you're talking about there is the Window manager. There has been no change in X itself.
Do us all a favour, do some research on how many non-graphics things can affect graphics performance in Linux and how little any graphics card does for desktop applications on _any_ operating system.
Also look up what a monolithic kernel architecture actually means (it doesn't mean it's all one lump when compiled).
You're using Linux on a Mac.
This means there are no drivers for your graphics card.
No wonder it's so damn slow.
Try it on a PC where there's actual hardware support and it's not rendering _the_entire_display_ through software, /then/ see how 'unoptimised' it is.