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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Should Novell Invade Red Hat Summit?

  • Written by The VAR Guy 1
  • June 10, 2008

Imagine if the Los Angeles Lakers held a fan rally in Boston, right in the Celtics’ back yard. That’s the situation facing the open source industry, where the Red Hat Summit starts June 18 right in Boston — roughly 15 miles from Novell’s corporate headquarters. So, should Novell defend its home turf and march on Red Hat’s parade? The VAR Guy certainly would. Here’s how.

First, some background: Red Hat Summit is a massive gathering of Red Hat partners, customers and followers. Red Hat will also provide some channel partner program updates at the event, and may even discuss a few strategies for managed service providers, according to MSPmentor.

Now, for the drama (supplied by The VAR Guy, of course): The event runs June 18 through June 20 at the Hynes Convention Center — which is a 15-mile drive from Novell’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

Another Tea Party?

So, how could Novell counter Red Hat while the summit is in town?

Certainly, prominent Novell SuSE Linux ads on buses, taxis, billboards and other public displays would catch some attention. And this is a prime opportunity for Novell to schedule some lunches and dinners with mutual partners — say, IBM, Intel and AMD — while those cherished sources are in Boston for the Red Hat event.

Novell could even throw a few curve balls: How about some SuSE Linux ads in Fenway Park, where Red Hat will host a private tour of the stadium for selected guests?

But hey: The VAR Guy isn’t playing favorites here. He’s just cheering for a good game — and maybe a few brush back pitches along the way.

Steal the Spotlight?

Conventional wisdom says Red Hat continues to dominate the corporate Linux server market, especially in North America. But Novell has turned a few heads lately, surprising skeptics with improving sales and profits.

The VAR Guy was down on Novell in 2007, but he’s gradually opened his mind to Novell and its improving fortunes this year. Even full-time open source bloggers like Matt Asay are giving Novell a second look.

Still, Novell’s marketing has taken its lumps over the years — and being the number 2 company in an open source industry can be thankless. Some of Novell’s marketing messages got lost in the noise of Microsoft, Red Hat and security companies that compete with Novell’s own identity management tools. Other Novell messages were too passive.

Will Novell take the next step, and launch a few surprise attacks during the Red Hat Summit in Boston? The VAR Guy will be watching.

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

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11 comments

  1. Avatar Jim F June 10, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
    Reply

    Time for novell to throw down the gauntlet and come out swinging, to mix a few metaphors. Novell should market to everyone at the red hat conference, as you’ve suggested.

  2. Avatar Mike June 11, 2008 @ 11:30 am
    Reply

    What on earth are you talking about? Redhat has an office in Boston. Lots of companies do – it’s not a small place. It’s not like Redhat are going to salt lake city for their event.

    Any open saucer worth their salt would be avoiding Novell and their shady and secret dealings with MS anyway.

  3. Avatar Joe Panettieri June 11, 2008 @ 11:53 am
    Reply

    Novell is no longer headquartered in Salt Lake; the company is now based in Mass.

  4. Avatar Johnny Hughes June 11, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
    Reply

    How about they just build a better version of Linux than Red Hat and stop signing patent deals with Microsoft.

    Maybe they could put their Enterprise SRPMS on a public website to.

    Then, maybe, open source enthusiasts would get on their side.

    Once that happens, their product will be recommended / installed by those open source enthusiasts.

    Then their market share will increase.

  5. Avatar ewriter June 11, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
    Reply

    Enough with the whining about patent deals already. For all intents and purposes the way Red Hat just settled their JBoss related patent suit did all the same things as Novell and Microsoft just not with Microsoft.

    If these kinds of things are shady, secret or otherwise evil is up for debate but Novell isn’t the only one doing them.

  6. Avatar Jay June 11, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
    Reply

    Actually with Novell trying to make Linux point and click so Windows admins can use it (That was actually told to me by a very high ranking Novell executive a short time ago) it should be interesting times ahead.

    I personally can’t stand Yast and try to nuke all installs of SLES at work here as soon as possible (except where SLES is required) after sucking off and moving the apps to Red Hat or CentOS.

  7. Avatar Johnny Hughes June 12, 2008 @ 1:02 am
    Reply

    The RedHat deal is not at all the same for the following reasons:

    1. Red Hat settled a patent lawsuit against them they did not do an agreement between companies without being sued.

    2. From the agreement “derivative works of or combination products using covered products are protected from any patent claim based in any respect on the covered products.”

    That does NOT only cover Red Hat customers, but anyone else using the code IAW the terms of the open source license.

    3. They stipulated that RHEL was “NOT INFRINGING” … so they did not say that they needed patent protection or stipulate that the patent was infringed. Instead, the got that patent taken off the table for the open source community in relation to this code.

    Not at all the same thing, not even close

  8. Avatar Johnny Hughes June 12, 2008 @ 1:10 am
    Reply

    don’t take my word for it … see that Eben Moglen and Groklaw have to say:

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080611191302741

    Specifically from Moglen:

    “Red Hat’s settlement of outstanding patent litigation on terms that provide additional protection to other members of the community upstream and downstream from Red Hat is a positive contribution to the resources for community patent defense. We would hope to see more settlements of this kind–in which parties secure more than their own particular legal advantage in relation to the third-party patent risk of the whole FOSS community–when commercial redistributors of FOSS choose to settle patent litigation. SFLC welcomes Red Hat’s efforts on the community’s behalf.”

  9. Avatar Ian Bruce June 12, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
    Reply

    Ian Bruce from Novell PR here. Re Johnny’s comment #4 above, we do provide our SRPMs (and we have for a long time), take a look at http://www.novell.com/linux/source/

  10. Avatar James Gerber June 12, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
    Reply

    hey Joe,

    I’ll be on the lookout for any interestingly-placed Novell ads in the area besides the banners in the Pru, I’m there just about every day. (I also live just down the street from Novell’s headquarters in Waltham so this is pretty cool to see).

    And to Red Hat if anyone is reading, if you want to get back at Novell, let me know, I can give you some good places in Waltham. 🙂

  11. Avatar The VAR Guy June 12, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
    Reply

    James @10: That was a classic commit. Wittier than even The VAR Guy.

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