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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Novell OpenSUSE 11.1: That’s Only Part of the Picture

  • Written by The VAR Guy 1
  • December 17, 2008
Novell is generating buzz this week with the December 18 launch of OpenSUSE 11.1. But The VAR Guy is looking at Novell from a slightly different perspective. The far bigger news involves senior VP Roger Levy (pictured) -- who may bring order to Novell's product lines. Here's the scoop, from The VAR Guy.

First, the basic facts. Earlier this week Novell announced that:

Roger Levy NovellNovell is generating buzz this week with the December 18 launch of OpenSUSE 11.1. But The VAR Guy is looking at Novell from a slightly different perspective. The far bigger news involves senior VP Roger Levy (pictured) — who may bring order to Novell’s product lines. Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy.

First, the basic facts. Earlier this week Novell announced that:

“Effective immediately, Roger Levy, previously general manager and senior vice president of Novell’s Open Platform Solutions (OPS) group, will move to the new role of senior vice president, strategic development, responsible for cross business unit strategy and offerings for the data center, end-user computing, and identity and security management markets.”

The VAR Guy is still waiting for an official Novell comment about Levy’s focus and role at the company. (Update 12/17/08, 12:12 p.m. eastern: Novell’s reply is in the comments section below.)

Regardless, Levy’s new position comes at a critical time for Novell and its channel partners. Novell’s SUSE Linux has gained momentum over the past two years or so. But a bigger problem still looms at the company: Novell — and its business partners — often fail to connect the dots between the company’s various products: Linux, identity management, security, etc. In fact, The VAR Guy often views those businesses as completely separate silos. That’s not good for business.

Educated Guess

Enter Levy. It’s only a hunch, but The VAR Guy thinks Levy will build marketing bridges between Novell’s various offerings. If everything goes as planned, SUSE Linux partners will more aggressively market identity and security management, and vice-versa. Moreover, Levy will help Novell to accelerate demand for some of the company’s more recent products — including the PlateSpin data center management tool.

Just yesterday, Avnet Technology Solutions President John Paget told Wall Street analysts that Novell PlateSpin is a key revenue opportunity for solutions providers. It’s the first time in recent memory that The VAR Guy has heard a major distributor mention Novell as key partner. (Novell and Avnet announced their partnership Dec. 10.)

Still, Novell and Levy must continue to build bridges across the Novell product lines. Sure, Novell generates roughly $1 billion in annual revenues. But right now, most folks think of Novell as a $130 million open source company with roughly $870 million in legacy revenue baggage. Novell needs to show the media, customers and partners that the company’s growth strategy is more than a SUSE Linux story.

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Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Open Source

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6 comments

  1. Avatar The VAR Guy December 17, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
    Reply

    Update: Novell PR has responded to a few questions from The VAR Guy. Here’s the exchange:

    The VAR Guy: Will Levy oversee all of the separate product efforts (SUSE, identity, security, etc.)?

    Novell PR: Levy will work with our CTO, Jeff Jaffe, to drive our product development efforts across all the business units. This will help drive alignment across the solution centers we discussed when we met — data center, end user computing, and identity and security management.

    The VAR Guy: Will Rex also oversee all those efforts on the technology side?

    Novell PR: Rex will assume responsibility for OPS (Open Platform Solutions) which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise. This is his heritage — he came to Novell when we acquired SUSE. He’s a recognized technology guru in the Linux space.

    The VAR Guy: Is it safe to expect stronger cross-brand messaging, promotions and partner programs from Novell? For instance, can SUSE partners expect to hear more about identity and security management? And vice-versa?

    Novell PR: Yes. A goal is to drive value for partners and resellers across the business lines, and to focus on opportunities in the data center, end user computing, and identity/security management markets. For example, our strong brand and presence in the Linux market gives our partners excellent cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for systems management, virtualization, workload management, identity management, and so on.

    -end-

  2. Avatar matthorany December 18, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
    Reply

    This is great news. Bringing order to Novell’s products is an absolute must. Like better integration of it’s own software running on linux (i.e. Identity Manager, iPrint, AFP, etc.) If Novell can get its chips in line, then hopefully this will help push the open source platform futher into the heart of the IT market. I think it’s fear of not having the proper support and/or interoperability of products running on Linux that scares people away from it. I hope Novell sees the bigger picture here.

  3. Avatar The VAR Guy December 18, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
    Reply

    Matthorany: Time will tell. Novell has gotten its Linux story straight. Now it’s time to get the bigger company story out in front of media, partners and customers. (Notice, our arrogant blogger put media first on the list…)

  4. Avatar HurdyGurdy December 19, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
    Reply

    matthorany,

    You say: ‘If Novell can get its chips in line, then hopefully this will help push the open source platform futher into the heart of the IT market.’

    I would consider this a miracle, as I have NEVER seen a manufacturer get their chips in line and then automagically their product is pushed into the heart of the IT market.

    Granted as a salesperson I am biased here. But here again, I rarely, if ever, see a product ‘sell itself’. Usually a compensated salesperson makes this happen. The compensation is the salesperson’s motivation. Without compensation, there is no motivation and with no motivation there is no sale.

    Please clarify how anything gets into the heart of the IT market without salespeople spreading the news? And if so, can Novell find good IT salespeople to sell their product without compensating them? My real world experience says: NO, NO, NO WAY. This stuff is dead out of the gate without highly qualified and motivated salespeople making IT departments aware of the benefitting technology. Microsoft pays more to its resellers to spread the news on its Office products, for example, and maybe this is the reason people spend 300 times more for MS Office than OpenOffice. And maybe that is why Microsoft has eaten into Novell’s marketshare since they stopped compensating their smaller partners for the valuable work they provided Novell ten years ago.

    I called Novell once and said: ‘Hey, how come my cost at Ingram is above the CDW street price?’. The Novell sales person said: ‘They sell more, that is why they have a higher margin.’

    I was able to translate this into: ‘Go away, you loser, and sell something else because we don’t need you, we have CDW.’

    And that is what I did seven years ago.

  5. Avatar Jude Jenkins December 21, 2008 @ 5:17 am
    Reply

    Can he cancel the Microsoft deal, and help shed Novell’s image as a front for them? Though Suse might have seen growth amongst risk-averse enterprise clients from their sales pitch as the only patent-safe linux, in light of the Bilski ruling that is pretty much down the pan.

    Though having a unified product line will help, it is surely not their major problem. When OpenSuse have to go to great length in their FAQ to distance themselves from Novell (a hard task considering they are not distant) in the hope of garnering community support, it would seem that the enterprise version, built on OpenSuse, is likely to wither from the roots up and that is probably a greater risk to Novell’s business in the long term.

  6. Avatar The VAR Guy December 22, 2008 @ 5:31 pm
    Reply

    Jude Jenkins: Hey, Jude. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) The VAR Guy needs to take a closer look at OpenSUSE community support. Where it was, where it is, where it could be.

    Admittedly, the Microsoft deal still haunts Novell is some areas. Overall — financially — The VAR Guy thinks the deal helped Novell gain more face time with CIOs and more revenue. But on the downside, there’s no doubt many die-hard FOSS folks will never forgive Novell for signing the Microsoft deal.

    Does that mean the OpenSUSE community has suffered? Frankly, The VAR Guy concedes he needs to take a much closer look at that question.

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