Dell Calls For Red Hat To Lower Prices 526
VaultX points to an article on CNET (linked below), writing "According to Dell, Red Hat needs to lower pricing. 'We believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, for the small and medium-sized business market, was out of the price range of these customers.' With Dell's strong presence in the Linux server market, Red Hat may want to listen."
i'll never trust dell for a lot of reasons but (Score:4, Interesting)
here it is [amdzone.com]
John Allen Mohammed
RedHat screwed (Score:3, Interesting)
As faras IBM is concerned, Suse is the only linux. And Novell is willing to discount things very heavily.
Why not offer alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Other Linux competitors (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry but Red Hat IS Linux to many businesses. Thats why Sun directs its challenges to Red Hat, thats why MS talks about Red Hat when they do the TCO arguments, Red Hat is the most visible company selling a Linux system. If you want to aim big, and Dell does, if your not going to carry Red Hat, there's no point in carrying Linux at all.
Redhat arrogance (Score:2, Interesting)
Debian CALLS FOR Dell TO LOWER PRICES (Score:1, Interesting)
If Dell isn't happy with RedHat's value, they're welcome to support Gentoo and Debian instead.
My bet is that RedHat does provide decent value for the dollar, so Dell'll stick with them.
Re:They could be lower but not by much (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why do they pay for Linux at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on who you are. If you're Pixar, then you're right -- $350-$1500 per year per server is manageable. If you (like me) work for a mid-size corporation with a hundred servers, a shrinking IT budget, and a need for only the security updates, $35,000 per year for just the support on the operating system is too much. We have always used Red Hat products in the past and are very satisfied with them, but we simply cannot pay that much money.
Dell is right; Red Hat has lost us as a customer. We would love to stay with them, but it doesn't matter now. We are now choosing between SuSE and Debian, with Red Hat not being part of the equation.
Re:They could be lower but not by much (Score:5, Interesting)
A better comparison would be with something like SUSE Enterprise server - their direct competition.
The price difference, as well as the number of options available is an eye-opener.
Re:RHAT listens to Dell? WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or you can buy it bare and install TaoLinux/WhiteBox/CentOS, which is binary compatible. This works for 99% of server installation.
Or buy with RHEL and then switch to TaoLinux/WhiteBox/CentOS via yum for updates after your subscription expires.
Either way you have options, perhaps you have the infrastructure to support your own linux servers then why pay for support. Perhaps you don't, then getting RH is a great deal.
RHEL ES vs. W2K3 SBS (Score:5, Interesting)
RHEL ES has two versions, priced at $350 and $800, depending on the support level. W2K3 SBS (Small Business Server) is available at different prices from different vendors, but is typically around $500. All prices in US dollars. The prices are quite similar. If you need support for more than installation and basic configuration, Windows 2003 is actually cheaper.
If small businesses find Windows easier to setup and maintain, then it could be worthwhile. I'm not able to personally confirm this one way or the other, but various people I know who have configured both Linux and Windows 2003 as servers claim that Windows is easier to configure and tune for performance.
Perhaps Dell simply means that for the market they are selling into and the price they are charging, there is a better product available from Microsoft. It's hard to see how Red Hat could compete on price; they really aren't charging a huge amount. For businesses that can't afford a full time server administrator and don't have any Linux expertise, it is quite possible that Windows just plain is a better choice.
Going off topic, Red Hat's website has the Ghandi quote that Slashdot loves: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." A year ago, Microsoft was fighting Red Hat. Now they are laughing at Red Hat. Linux still has a chance, but this battle definitely isn't going the way that Red Hat planned.
I hate to say it, but with IBM preferring Novell and SLES, I think Red Hat has lost.
Re:Solaris 10 x86 throws a spanner at RH EL4 (Score:4, Interesting)
Thse are all the reasons not to use it for a server.
To my brother poster: Gentoo on the server? If you were my employee I'd have you fired. And no, I don't want to hear about building then distributing binary packages.
The only truly free options for servers is Debian stable. Long release cycle, vast package repostiories, security backports so your servers don't break, seamless upgrades in place. Everything Fedora is not. Use it or at least something actually meant to be stable, be it Whitebox, SuSE, etc.
Dell violates the GPL and then talks about price?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now Dell wants to act as if it is a friendly member of the Linux community and suggest what the pricing should be? Hey! Violating the GPL is not what a member of the Linux community should ever do. Doing it for over a year and a half is a clear indication that Dell doesn't give a damn about the linux community or the licensing terms they have choosen.
Bottom line: Dell has terminated the grants of the GPL by violating the license. Regards of what price Red Hat chooses, Dell has no legal rights to be redistributing the Linux kernel who's license they decided to actively (and continues to) violate.
Re:Hi I'm captain obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
And Steve Ballmer wants a $100 PC so people can afford to spend $200 on Windows.
And I want a pony.
* - free linux doesn't come with the Redhat enterprise support, but presumably a small business doesn't need as much support as a large company. I haven't looked to see if they do this, but perhaps a less expensive support options for smaller installations?
Amen (Score:4, Interesting)
When you hire the best that is what you get. When you hire the cheapest that is what you get. Quality isn't free. I guess when all the software development jobs are in India/China we might start to understand there is more to being an excellent employee/partner than just understanding how to program. Or maybe not! Either way I'm on my way out of programming asap.
So much for free software (Score:2, Interesting)
There are plenty of other distributions available which are not only technologically superior, but also more open than Red Hat's offerings. I think anyone who uses a Red Hat product in future also needs to think about what they are contributing to with their money as well...This does not seem to be a company with the best of intentions.
In short, I definitely recommend a boycott of Red Hat's products. You'll be doing yourself a favour in terms of just about any other distro out there being more technically sound, and you'll be doing Linux as a whole a favour by not giving money to a commercialist who wants to take the OS in a direction which is the opposite of what most of us stand for.
On a related issue, we need to find a way to do something about Red Hat's having moved the development of several GNU projects to their own servers as well, IMHO. This is a company in urgent need of a reminder that it surely is desirable to give back rather than just take.
Price Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Don't Write Home About RH Support (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I've had CISCO support reps in the Phillipines stay on the phone with me ALL NIGHT fixing our firewall problems. And these guys REALLY knew what they were doing.
And the commercial support that I've gotten from DELL was great when it came to advice, and staying on the phone until my RAID was back in one piece, even though I was using an unsupported OS (FreeBSD).
new web cartoon, now featuring Bitey, the pound cat: Jendini.com [jendini.com]
Re:Don't Write Home About RH Support (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen Microsoft fly up people to help with Exchange servers.
I've been on the phone with top level Sun techs within five minutes of the event.
I do, however, work for a very big customer. I don't even pretend that anyone a tenth the size would get this support.
Re:Don't Write Home About RH Support (Score:3, Interesting)
I also had that happen, I snagged my vioce memo recorder and held it to the speaker and asked him again... "what did you say?"
I then sent that tape to our VP of operations with a letter that the vendor refuses to work with us anymore despite what contracts we have with them.
I had a phone call 4 weeks later from that tech saying how sorry he was and that from now on I need to call him directly for any and all problems at any time.
if your company is big enough, the legal department is simpl,y waiting for crap like that.
a support contract IS a contract, and if your company has any teeth, it's nice to force a vendor to do what they say.
we hold DELL's feet over the fire almost monthly.
the companies you deal with have no right to not provide what they promised, you simply have to bypass the idiots you are talking to and go to where the money is.
Re:They could be lower but not by much (Score:3, Interesting)
The issue with CALs isn't that the clients aren't free. It is that you have to pay for not only the OS on the client but also for their right to connect to a server.
I don't know all the details, but if you have a server and 100 workstations you pay for:
1. Server license
2. 100 workstation licenses
3. 100 CALs to enable server to talk to 100 workstations at once.
If you had 10 servers my guess is that you'd pay:
1. 10 Server licenses
2. 100 workstation licenses
3. 1000 CALs to enable each server to talk to 100 workstations at once.
You see that the CALs are more of a server-related expense than a client-related, since they go up as you add servers as well as clients.
The other problem with all of this is license managment. If you don't have CALs all you need is to tape a copy of the OS license to the top of each computer and you know that you are fully legit. With CALs thrown in you also need to analyze who is connecting to what server at what time to figure out how you're doing.
With Samba there are no CALs, so you can pick the server and clients on their own merits, and mix and match them however you want...
Re:They could be lower but not by much (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:They could be lower but not by much (Score:1, Interesting)