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"We're excited by the muted reaction to Vista," Ron Hovsepian, Novell's chief executive, told the media at a meeting here Thursday. " We're going to attack (Microsoft) vigorously and go after their footprint as much as we can."
Microsoft's Vista was five years in the making, so the code behind it is very complex, Hovsepian said, whereas open source is more nimble and flexible. "And we have got to take advantage of that."
Despite Novell's commitment to attack the market on its own terms, Hovsepian acknowledges that there are benefits to its alliance with the software giant. The two companies signed the pact in November and fleshed out details of it this week.
The reality is you can't escape the "Microsoft juggernaut" in the marketplace, so you have to work with them to get your foot in the door, Hovsepian said. When you talk to customers, he said, most will say "I hate Microsoft." Yet those same customers say 60 percent of their servers run on Windows--not Linux, which Novell backs.
Ron Hovsepian
"The closer you get to the customer?you increase the chance of migrating footprints to Linux," Hovsepian said. "We want to compete with Microsoft?and then we'll work together once a customer decides which platform (to run)?It ensures longevity for Novell in the marketplace."
Linux is a $500 million market, he noted, and growing at the expense of Unix consolidation. "We have not taken enough from Microsoft," he said.
One significant customer that Novell has taken from Microsoft, however, is French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen. Novell is replacing Peugeot's Windows systems with 20,000 Suse Linux desktops and 2,500 servers.
The Peugeot win was considerable. Yet market share issues still played a role in Novell's decision to join hands with longtime bitter enemy Microsoft, despite Novell's claims that it was purely customer driven.
"It was not a deal that Novell had to make," Hovsepian said. However, it was definitely made to create more market momentum; and it was a deal that seemed to resonate with the customers, he added.
"We did not sign a patent cross-license agreement with Microsoft. That has been one of the confusion points out there. What we agreed to was you will not sue our customers and we will not sue your customers for any of our products," Hovsepian said.
"That is what we agreed to--a covenant not to sue our customers. That is where some of the confusion and rhetoric has been generated in the marketplace. So are we really clear? Microsoft can sue us, and we can sue Microsoft tomorrow."
The threat of legal action, real or otherwise, had hindered Linux deals in the marketplace, according to Hovsepian.
He said that Novell had lost Linux deals with four Fortune 500 customers to Microsoft over concerns about intellectual property. Looking at the losses beforehand, he said, the deal with Microsoft "makes sense."
The pact with Microsoft has certainly helped in the three months following the signing, Hovsepian said. The software maker has honored its contractual commitments by hiring sales staff and dedicating money to marketing. The companies are also working together on an interoperability lab.
More importantly for Novell, "big wins" have started to roll in, further justifying Novell's decision to enter into an agreement on "coopetition," or a blend of cooperation and competition, with its foe. Novell claims that about 35,000 Suse Linux support certificates have been sold since the deal was signed.
Yet Hovsepian remains wary. He marks the progress every day. "I have to, because it's a big deal for Novell," he said.
Chris Duckett and Scott Mckenzie of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.
See more CNET content tagged:
Novell Inc., Peugeot, marketplace, alliance, SuSE Linux
Lets get some numbers and Novell sales....does anyone still use Netware??
The release did not have the same energy as previous OS releases by Microsoft. With Win95, they put a ton of money into the release and fanfare and the public went nuts. By contrast, they put a ton of money into the Vista release and the energy and fanfare from the public was much less.
That's not to say Vista isn't selling. Hardware sales are being driven by Vista's bloated power needs so of course there's a computer sales spike along with the software spike from OS sales.
They're not compairing Netware to Vista and saying Vista's not moving at all and Netware is beating it sensless. The reference to it is really irrelivent other than to insite an emotional response to your knee jerk reationary comment.
Netware was the original "energizer bunny". One company has servers that haven't been rebooted in over 5 years.
Here's the CNet article on sales of boxed Vista:
http://news.com.com/Sales+of+boxed+Vista+copies+down+over+XP/2100-1016_3-6159700.html?tag=nefd.top
Novell voluntarily got in bed with the devil, so Novell can lie there, take it, and stop whining to the rest of us about what they willingly bought into.
/P
Microsoft or Linux can do whatever they wish to do,but the future of internet is mine.
dr noh
inventor of the future generation of email system
patent pending, uspto
san francisco,usa
"OS/2" Genealogical Linkages You Say!
So why is Vista slower than XP?
2) "Moreover, Linux is now light years behind Vista in sophistication and all the more reason to abandon it as desktop OS."
Wrong. Vista is a legacy operating system, primarily designed to support the vast numbers of Win32 applications in existence. Vista is a patch to XP, which is a patch to 2000, which is a patch to NT. Linux is a clean operating system without any such baggage.
3) "Next comes the Server version which will kill off Linux once and for all."
How long will it take for you to issue a retraction to this statement? 12 months? 24 months?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpOz8duTh-4
If you don't follow it, and don't use it, you wouldn't understand
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4508336341884243249&q=mad+about+vista
* Linux had 64 bit architecture support long before MSFT even thought up the idea.
* Linux had full IPv6 support SIX years ago, while Vista finally came out with it.
As for the rest of your post? Well, here's a quarter, so go buy yourself a clue: .DLL's (the rest of us calll 'em "dynamic libraries") have been part and parcel of Linux and most other OS kernels for well over a decade now. And /etc/modules.conf has been around for a long, long time, Genius.
In Windows' case, yes, sophistication == BLOAT, and slowness. Otherwise, do tell us why Vista has such ungodly high hardware requirements?
"the Server version"? ROTFL! Umm, okay... MSFT has been trying to take on the server market ever since Windows NT 3.5 (possibly earlier). Once Linux gained wide acceptance in the server room, Windows began losing ground. It is still dying as we speak in the server space, and will likely continue to do so. I give it five - seven years before Windows dips below 5% of the aggregate server market.
/P
Why is Windows the only OS that degrades over time?
Why can't the Windows files systems self-defrag? Why is MS taking over 10 years on a file system that was available elsewhere before they even started on it?
Why are all the bells and whistles in Vista something that Linux users have had access to for years, in some cases?
Oh that is right, because Windows is so advanced.
Seriously, though - you just said you've decided to do less stuff and Linux is better at that. At some point this year I'll build a MCE system running Ultimate or maybe Q and toss my other PVR's. I'll also put my photos and music on my home network so I can access them from any Extender. Finally, I'll digital all my documents and store them w/bitlocker to ensure they're safe and secure.
Point is people are using their computers for more, not less. XP changed the way people use their PC's, and Vista will do so again. Linux just commodotizes the familiar scenarios.
- It's behind the times?!
- by bradyme February 15, 2007 3:28 PM PST
- Review this google video of Ubuntu and tell me who is behind.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- well which is it?
- by Nizzuts February 16, 2007 7:18 AM PST
- ubuntu video is cool, though I can't help wondering how much work it took to get Beryl running (which kernel, which drivers, which Beryl revision), and what compatibility is like.
- Like this
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(36 Comments)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpOz8duTh-4
If you don't follow it, and don't use it, you wouldn't understand
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4508336341884243249&q=mad+about+vista
The Vista video is silly. HP can support whatever they want, but this thing's several years old - how long should they support it? That said, I bet there's a workaround someplace (e.g. 1600 LJ driver just works, generic in-box driver, etc). Software compatibility seems like a reasonable argument except when it's made by a linux user, and Windows probably has the best backward compatibility story of any OS ever. Also, not sure who is trying to get away w/a $600 low-end eMachines PC for gaming, but complaining that you can't run games on the cheapest machine you can find is also a bit silly. In the end, Vista's hardware requirements are basically the same as OSX and it's a lot easier to use / maintain than *nix.