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Microsoft To Buy $100M More SUSE Support Vouchers
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:50 PM
from the whole-lot-of-sweetness dept.
from the whole-lot-of-sweetness dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft will buy and resell up to another $100 million worth of enterprise support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. Two years ago, Microsoft agreed to buy and resell $240 million worth of the vouchers. Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft, confirmed that some of the subscription vouchers were sold to customers for less than face value, though none were given away for free."
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Can anyone clarify? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe, though I'm not certain, that by providing these vouchers, M$ is in fact helping to support interoperablity across platforms. Or, at least, they can be seen to be trying to help this. As a side benefit, they cycle some revenue through Novell, who they currently aren't at war with.
I think this is part of the contact they entered into with Novell that everyone initially said would be used to fragment the OSS people by saying that only Novell would be unencumbered by patent claims.
That's probably oversimplified, but that's my quick take on it.
Cheers
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose $100m will pay some Mono developers' salaries for a while longer, though I reckon if they wanted to really support Linux interoperability and suchlike, they'd have bought RedHat vouchers instead/as well.
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose $100m will pay some Mono developers' salaries for a while longer, though I reckon if they wanted to really support Linux interoperability and suchlike, they'd have bought RedHat vouchers instead/as well.
They tried to offer the same deal to Red Hat more than once I think. But while Red Hat was quite happy to offer to work work with them on interoperability as much as they liked, they refused to enter into any cross patent protection deal like Novell. So no "You open source commies are stealing our IP" deal was possible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the lesson of $5 now vs. $10 in a year, except Microsoft isn't offering the $10 in a year, only more threats.
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MS$ has never been at war with Novell. MS$ has always been at war with IBM....
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Insightful)
"MS$ has never been at war with Novell. MS$ has always been at war with IBM...."
That is so not true. Here lay NetWare and Word Perfect, May they rest in peace. And not to forget poor DR-DOS.
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Funny)
It seems more like the dubious world of high finance and banking than anything high tech. Microsoft is buying and selling Linux vouchers? Well they could just as easily be selling Indulgences [wikipedia.org].
And BTW my eyes happened to glance at the top of Slashdot, I thought it read "Don't feed the penguins".
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Insightful)
They look like they're supporting Linux, but they're only doing it for the vendor that's in their back pocket.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But the main question is: Why go MS + (subsidized NOVL) rather than going 100% Linux (w/ paid support)
Granted, these are not regular Windows shops, but usually have extra specialized support from MS
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I think more likely they are doing it to stir up FUD in the Linux distro community. They are beating their chest and seeing how many dogs put their tails between their legs.
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I don't know. I mean, I'm as suspicious of Microsoft as the next geek, but I wonder if it's always warranted.
Towards that end though, Microsoft are complicit - what is their public relations dept actually doing? A POC who actually addressed the concerns and criticisms levelled at the company would go a long way towards reducing their 'evil empire' image.
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is called hedging your bets and cutting your losses.
Let's say I'm a CIO who is considering putting Linux in my shop and dropping Microsoft. I'm a little scared, but I want to take the plunge.
Microsoft comes in, and says "we'll work with you. We'll see you commercial support for Linux, and push you in the direction of a Linux distro aimed at interoperability with Microsoft products."
Instead of Microsoft losing money completely, they make up the loss of Microsoft licenses with profits from support contracts, and convince the CIO to not drop Microsoft completely, but rather mix Linux and Microsoft products. They keep a close relationship with the CIO, and establish goodwill in the hopes the CIO will return completely to the Microsoft fold.
All the while they earn interoperability brownie points with the EU.
Is this evil? No. It is in fact really smart business and I applaud them following legitimate smart business tactics as opposed to some of their old ones.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, if their Linux support is anything like their Windows support, they won't stay on the market for long.
But if that is really their intent, I applaud them for using legitimate business tactic too.
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft isn't providing the support. Novell provides the support. Microsoft is reselling Novell support.
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know whether it is that,or they are just sticking the Linux boxes in the corner. They tell the CIO "Linux? Sure it is good for email servers,since email is full of spam and malware nowadays,or for a file server that you want access to on the DMZ without authentication,but do you really want to give up the ease of use that is your AD domain? We would be happy to set up Linux servers to do email and file serving FOR you,and we'll do it all at a lower initial cost and with a lower TCO. What do you say?"
I agree that it is simply good business to offer a full solution like that. And let us not forget that while there are plenty of Windows admins,Linux admins are harder to find and more expensive to boot. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if in a year or two they don't just take the plunge and buy one of the smaller distros that works well with Windows Server(My money would be on Xandros. They could get it cheap and with the API deal their server product works wonderfully in an AD domain. It also rips off the Win MMC for the interface,so no retraining required.) and offer it as "An integrated end to end solution that minimizes risks thanks to a non homogeneous environment and maximizes both customer satisfaction and server uptime." But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know whether it is that,or they are just sticking the Linux boxes in the corner. They tell the CIO "Linux? Sure it is good for email servers,since email is full of spam and malware nowadays,or for a file server that you want access to on the DMZ without authentication,but do you really want to give up the ease of use that is your AD domain?
No. Microsoft is not going to tell people that *nix is good for mail servers. Nor are they going to tell people that it's a good file server. They offer those products already.
What MS might do is play, "Oh you're thinking about using Linux in your network? You know, Linux is hard to use but we got your back with these support contracts. And you wouldn't want just anyone selling you a support contract, we have a fully paid up perpetual license for Linux"
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well as someone who has used both Xandros server and desktop,and even managed to sell a couple of servers running Xandros to a couple of SMBs,I can say that without a doubt Xandros is the easiest Linux distro I have ever used as far as playing nice in a Windows SMB. And the Xandros XMC is damned near identical to the Winserver MMC,which made showing their admins the ropes butt simple. It will run as a controller or member server in an AD forest,Scalix makes a nice MS Exchange replacement,complete with calendaring and group workspaces,and the built in Xen makes for easy virtualization,plus it already has the hooks for VMWare if you want to go that route.
If you need to switch over a Windows domain into a mixed environment or even completely over to Linux,Xandros seriously cuts down on retraining. To show the SMBs how easy it was I simply had them point out the most clueless user they had and had them use my Xandros laptop to do their work. In both cases the secretaries immediately went to work without a bit of trouble. Both fired up MS Office 2K after logging on to the domain and just kept on chugging. The only question I got was "Can you make a shortcut to the email on the desktop?" and once I gave them that they were good to go. The best part is Xandros has a "make it act like XP" button which when called will make all the keyboard shortcuts and context menus behave like WinXP,so if the user can run Windows he/she can run Xandros. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look/remember MS Halloween documents which are verified to be true, you will notice they figured out the weak spot of community: Easy to divide.
So, each person boycotting Novell for a very good reason or doesn't use Gnome because of Icaza is a win for Microsoft. $100M is nothing for them, absolutely nothing.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The EU also declared them to be a monopoly. The issue is not what they were judged on in the past, but whether or not future business practices will merit judgments against them. Having interoperability deals, and playing nice with others saves them from possible antitrust judgments.
The last judgment was over $500 million, plus interest. So they're spending $100 million here, but they recoup some of that by selling the licenses. Even if they take a 50% loss (unlikely) they're dropping 50 million to prev
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Informative)
Antitrust isn't about market share so much as how well you play with others. You can be anti-competitive without a commanding market share. For instance, Intel is in hot water for demanding retailers not carry AMD products and without shipments from retailers who did. Intel doesn't have a 90% market share, but they can be held responsible for their tactics.
Conversely, the local utility company has no competition, yet they are a legal monopoly. In some states, these "natural" monopolies are regulated.
Microsoft can have a 93% OS market share, and get a pass if they behave well and play nicely with the other kids in the sandbox. Interoperability is precisely what the EU called for.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would NOT be surprised if I would see Microsoft do something to ultimately bury Novell. When I read the Halloween Documents for myself, I find it odd Microsoft would be any more genuine about supporting Linux than they were about
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Interesting)
$100MM seems like a lot, but is this an under the table way to fund Moonlight (Mono version of Silverlight) to help them gain traction on Flash?
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Insightful)
$100MM seems like a lot, but is this an under the table way to fund Moonlight (Mono version of Silverlight) to help them gain traction on Flash?
Well it's certainly an under-the-table something. Microsoft always hides large money transfers for underhanded deals under some other guise. It could be that, or it could be that Microsoft is trying to get SuSE to do something else that would further splinter the free and open source software communities further.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well, remember, this is Novell. So, the details of the deal with Novell and MS are already public and well known.
This could have an ulterior motive by MS, but it could still be an above-board deal
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone actually believe that Microsoft will fund anything which will provide exact or better experience than the same thing on Windows?
Why would people use Windows than? Why does MS create Silverlight at first place absolutely knowing industry will laugh at them? They were so bugged by Adobe changing policy and shipping Flash to all big three platforms at same time. A person enjoying Youtube on Linux is the Microsoft's worst nightmare. It shouldn't work!
Also Flash is way more than Youtube, you can even ship a full feature media player on 3 different platforms just by some Flash/Flex/Air stuff. E.g. Adobe Media Player.
The "Flash Lite 3" plans to ship it for free to multiple handheld platforms must be particularly alerting for MS.
If MS really wanted to race with Flash as a "new option", not "another opportunity to lock people to windows". I tell you what would happen. SilverlightInstaller.i386.rpm _and_ 64bit version (bit to bit, PERFECTLY same as windows) would be available from Microsoft site itself. Man, _that_ would raise alarm at Adobe.
Also, lets not forget Adobe makes money from the Flash creation tools and servers etc. so a future open source flash minus (patented and binary) codecs is not impossible thing. I am speaking about that kind of thing: https://www.helixcommunity.org/ [helixcommunity.org] , what would be the meaning of monkeying with open source code to replicate a microsoft technology knowing you will never achieve windows version?
Parent
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft needs Silverlight penetration in order to compete with Flash. Windows is not where MS makes their money, software and tools like Office and Visual Studio is where they make money. Not to mention their want to compete with Google for ad revenue.
Silverlight gives them the ability to deploy rich web versions of Office for a subscription. .NET developers, as well as allowing .NET developers access to newer platforms with the skills and software they already own.
Silverlight gives them the ability to compete and control some of the advertisement market.
Silverlight helps them sell servers and Visual Studio.
Silverlight helps them gain more
Silverlight helps them maintain control over Internet technologies, or at least stops some of their loss of control.
As far as Microsoft doing this because Adobe changed their policy, I think the opposite is true. Adobe changed their policy as a stop-loss against Silverlight and XPS. Adobe needs to maintain their market share in light of their new competition from Microsoft.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They missed something... (in Ballmer way), "Designers designers designers!"
In worst, most dark days of Macintosh, this platform was choice of designers and they were enjoying simultaneous, generally better performing Adobe/Macromedia software. That is way before OS X or Intel switch and if you look at archive.org , people were discussing if Mac will go chap 11 or instantly die daily.
You can't tell a designer to use MS "Visual Studio" on Windows to design. Believe me, it won't work no matter how hard you try
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> As for contaminated IP, I would submit that Samba/CIFS and WINE have far more IP (patent) liability than mono does
Yes, but you would be wrong about that.
Jeremy.
Re:Can anyone clarify? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suspect Microsoft is doing this to maintain control of its customer base. They get a new client they run Linux and Windows, with slim chance of them getting away from Linux. Downplaying or dissing Linux will not lead to good relations to the client. Supporting Linux isn't their cup of tea. So they sell them at reduced cost SUSE Support vouchers to their clients, so they can go to them for the Linux Problems, Microsoft Consultants while working with the client can use support which the client paid mostly for, and charge for the hour to sit there and wait for the SUSE support to come with an answer. As well being on location Microsoft makes sure that Linux doesn't creep onto its territory. Their Client is happy as they got Linux support cheap, and Microsoft is not pressing them to get off Linux. Thus having a client happy with Microsoft. Being Microsoft is there to prevent creep in one direction and the customer over time is soften up a bit. Perhaps just perhaps they may decide that they may replace the stressed out MySQL server with an MSSQL server and while MSSQL is there you may want to upgrade their intranet to Sharepoint. Or get Mono working great on their servers and get some new ASP.NET development using MS Visual Studios.
Parent
Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you buy Linux support from MS? You would think you'd get better support buying it from, oh, a lemonade stand perhaps?
Because Microsoft is know for excellent support?
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you buy Linux support from MS? You would think you'd get better support buying it from, oh, a lemonade stand perhaps?
Because Microsoft is know for excellent support?
No, because Microsoft is known for its high quality lemons.
Parent
The support is from Novell. (Score:2)
Microsoft is reselling Novell support.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
at a loss.
It's pretty clear the $100M is Novell's payback for signing the patent license agreement.
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Well, yeh, I was just pointing out that there was no danger of getting some Microserf asking you "would you like VBscript with that?"
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Think of it as Carbon Credits for the soul...
even Dark Overlords care about the enviornment...
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He said nothing whatsoever about MS's customer support for MS products, which your anecdote is about.
He suggested that MS would not be a good provider of Linux support. Similarly, I am sure he would not buy support for MS Windows from Red Hat.
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See, you could have presented all of that information in a polite manner, and in all probability you would have been modded informative for it.
*sigh*
Well, in any case, it seems that there is a huge difference between the Indians that work for the consumer support division and the ones that work for the commercial/server side of things. That is probably not anything out of the ordinary; probably you're really comparing apples and oranges there.
The question should be whether MS server support is better than (
And as an added bouns you get a free.... (Score:2)
....Bill and Melinda Gates foundation sponsored Ringtone [condomcondom.org]
Like geeks really need this...
Microsoft to sell SUSE Support Vouchers .. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
insert car analogy here
It's like Ford reselling support for Toyota cars.
Re: Microsoft to sell SUSE Support Vouchers .. (Score:3, Funny)
and Toyota putting 'Toyota recommends Ford Focus' on every car Toyota sells
Re:Microsoft to sell SUSE Support Vouchers .. (Score:5, Interesting)
insert car analogy here ...
Ford giving you a discount on your next Chevy (and service on the thing while you own it, too!)
Dunno what would be more incredulous - selling the scheme with a straight face, or actually buying into it with one.
(hey, you asked...)
Parent
Subtle effects on SUSE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Yea, and they both hate puppies too.
You see, puppies start with the letter P, neither of them have P's in their names and we know that OSS naming generally means every letter in a name stands for something else. Well, neither one of them though about the puppies and neither one of them put the letter P in their names so they both hate puppies.
(I hope you were joking to, otherwise I feel I might have needed to add that two P's are like P P's which is the same as two puppies so you end up with puppy P P's.)
Re:i dont know (Score:5, Insightful)
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