SAP prefers SUSE
Life has been better for Red Hat. First there was Oracle pitching customers on its own fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and now SAP is recommending Novell's SUSE Linux as its preferred platform.
SAP is recommending SUSE as its preferred Linux platform, the stuff of which stacks are made, and Novell is going start being the first line of defense for people running SAP applications on SUSE....
Novell is supposed to handle both the apps and the operating system under a maintenance-and-support arrangement with SAP styled SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority Support.
The program is supposed to focus on optimizing the price/performance of mission-critical workloads and includes volume discounts for application configurations. And there's a special on for the next 90 days.
It's not hugely surprising that German-born SAP would prefer German-born SUSE, but the timing couldn't be worse for Red Hat, or better for Novell, which claims its deal with Microsoft has had a "halo effect" on its Linux business, generally. With Ubuntu getting more and more enterprise credibility, Novell's Linux numbers growing 69%, and Red Hat apparently struggling with JBoss, Red Hat has seen better days.
And yet Red Hat is expected to report strong Q3 earnings shortly. Perhaps its customers' votes matter more? Time will tell, but Novell looks to be making a real drive to the goal with its recent Linux successes.
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. 
