Novell makes Linux easy with SUSE Studio
Microsoft, for all its faults, has significantly lowered the bar to IT development, offering tools like Visual Studio that help make average developers more productive. Linux, on the contrary, has been supercharged with powerful capabilities, but has often required significant experience to harness that power.
In other words, Novell, like Microsoft before it, wants to make technology easy.
Novell isn't alone in this aim, of course. Canonical has made great strides in making the Linux "desktop" intuitive and easy, while Red Hat has been working hard to facilitate Linux-based virtualization and cloud computing.
But Novell's SUSE Appliance Program arguably tackles one of the hardest problems in Linux, and delivers a truly easy experience. I asked Matt Richards, Novell's senior program manager for SUSE Appliance Program, to identify how Novell's strategy differs not only from the other Linux vendors, but also from Microsoft.
His answer is instructive:
We are the only operating system vendor that is focused on making it easy for ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to make money from software appliances. The SUSE Appliance Program is designed specifically for ISVs, providing the technical, sales, and marketing capabilities that ISVs need to build appliances, get appliances into the market, and expand their application footprint.
Only Novell allows ISVs to customize a mission-critical operating system--and get full support for that customized OS.
Proprietary operating systems lack the modularity that Linux offers, and other Linux vendors don't have the SUSE Studio Online tool, which enables ISVs to customize their operating system in a matter of minutes. When you add the technology to our distribution partners like TechData, we offer a unique value proposition that helps ISVs expand their market opportunity.
It's hard to overstate the importance of Richards' comment about "full support," as I've noted before. It's hard enough to enable customization if you're a vendor, but then to support those customizations? Brutally difficult.
And yet that is what Novell is doing, with a host of ISVs already signed up in support.
Novell has demonstrated that it can cut prices, as it has with IBM on mainframes. That's great for enterprises, but the big cost for ISVs is development, which Novell's SUSE Appliance Program should go a long way toward reducing.
This is a bold move by Novell, and great for the industry. Novell's SUSE Studio Online sends a shot over the bow of proprietary software tools, pushing the envelope on innovation. Try finding something as good as SUSE Studio Online for Windows, Unix, etc. (Spoiler: you won't.)
Novell SUSE Studio Online - screenshot
(Credit: Novell)Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
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. 
Wow, I'm all for knowing what powerful capabilities Linux has that Windows doesn't.
LOL
Linux can be bent to your will, Windows bends you to its will.
- by pentest July 29, 2009 9:26 AM PDT
- There is very little development potential in SuSE studio.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(7 Comments)I have been using it for months as an alpha tester, and it does have value to some people but not to normal users.
It is great for customizing a VM or rolling your own live CD/USB distro, but the fact of the matter is there is nothing here that you can't do with a standard Linux distro just as easily.
It is not "brutally difficult" to support a creation made by SUSE studio because they all have the same foundation and very little is changed from a normal SUSE distro. That you compare VS with SUSE Studio shows once again just how little knowledge you have.
And you are incorrect, Visual Studio is not to help average developers, it exists so technically ignorant API monkeys can churn out unstable, unoriginal, and insecure crapware.