The Differences Between Red Hat and Novell

Tiberius_Fel writes "A former Novell employee has done a comparison at InfoWorld, reflecting on the business practices of Red Hat and Novell. They focus on such areas as customers, culture, and partners." From the article: "Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear ... This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way."

Not much of an article.

[rizzo320]

It must be a slow news day. It's a short article with not much analysis. It is good to see an article comparing the business practices of Linux Vendor vs Linux Vendor compared to the usual Linux Vendor vs Microsoft we usually get.

Because

[Kawahee]

This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way.

Yes... that's because Novell has woken up and realised that just because a company is pro-OSS it doesn't make them good. Hopefully IBM will figure it out soon.

What needs to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what needs to be done if Linux is ever going to take over as the "Main Stream" OS. Novell needs to leave the server stuff alone, RedHat has got linux on the server down to a science. What Novell needs to do, is take what it has in SUSE, and work on getting more linux on desktop users machines. If both companys would realise this, and work on it, it would pose a VERY big threat to Microsoft, and push Linux as the mainstream os.

~Alan

The world changes

[Cmdr_earthsnake]

Yes... that's because Novell has woken up and realised that just because a company is pro-OSS it doesn't make them good. Hopefully IBM will figure it out soon.

I agree, the thing is that if you factor in good buisness practices that actually work better all round for the customers and buisness. For instance if I was a Red hat customer and they chose to disgard me before I made any real money, then I went to another company who were more endearing and offered better customer support, who would be losing out? Red hat.

And as for changing over to the SuSe core, I would say Novell made a good choice, I like the direction Novell is going in, they are doing well.

Re:Because

[Tethys_was_taken]

Yes... that's because Novell has woken up and realised that just because a company is pro-OSS it doesn't make them good. Hopefully IBM will figure it out soon.

What does make a company good then? And, more importantly, why will what's good for one customer be good for another?

Re:Because

[Kawahee]

A good company is one that gets stuff done. Take Microsoft for example. You get a new version of Windows every 5 or so years, you get a new IDE every two, and a new version of Office every 3 or so.

And for what's good for one customer being good for another: market research, market research, market research.

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[Anonymous Coward]

First SuSE labs (Novell) employees some Linux kernel developers.
Even IBM does.

Second all three employees GCC developers though they are not all equal.
RedHat has more global write maintainers than any other company but that is because they started working on GCC before any of them. RedHat's GCC developers are leaving Redhat and are going either to Apple (at least three examples) or Codesourcery (a couple) or AMD (one example though he was at metrowerks for a while). These are main developers of GCC and not just some unkown developers. Novell is gaining more and more mainainership of GCC in general, and already employees the maintainer of the x86_64 port which is one of the major ports for the comming year or two for servers (even though I don't really want to say it is as I am more of a powerpc person).

Any other point is Novell is getting more and more into free software they have to go slowly and choose and pick their partners otherwise they will find themselves in a way of the internet bobble.

-- a semi unknown GCC developer.

Enterprise environments

[recharged95]

Nice article, but it doesn't say much about the importance of the two companies co-existing and creating a market for OSS. In the end, it comes down to who has the better product--so far Red Hat has the market since it was the first on the scene as a legit business. It is attacking the right industries (Financials and Gov't-i.e. DoD), and has a strong university presence. SuSE had a lot of respect before Novell and the acquisition was looked upon as promising with all the international support, but they were slow in getting 10.0 out the door. SuSE has hardly any university presense and Novell hasn't focused on any industries aside from what IBM or Sun had before the acquisition. Though you can't beat Novell's networking knowledge base. That's the diff.

As a developer & user, Red Hat needs to tighten up on their edge releases (FC4 and it's migration to EL for instance). FC4 maybe used by more folks out there, but it's too klunky for the application developer market and less stable that OpenSuSE. And app-development is where the real cash is made.

Novell, aside from focusing on a couple of markets only needs to increase [kernel] performance as SuSE (and openSuSE) are much more polished for a enterprise environment that RH. I find that application development is much easier on SuSE where kernel dev is easier on FC4. I picked out the F/OSS projects only because companies are moving to the model of developing against the 'F/OSS' version and then deploying on the paid 'OSS' version, hence delaying the licensing/service purchase. It makes sense since if forces the developer and vendor share the risks and have mutual interests to succeed.

Re:For profits are like that

[Anonymous Coward]

If your company were a public corporation, you would be bound by law to seek profit to the exclusion of all else for the benefit of your shareholders (barring any shareholder resolutions demanding otherwise).

If you don't and take other considerations first (such as charity, not being "an arse", etc), you can be held civily or even criminally liable in the US.

IBM

[16K Ram Pack]

IBM have a different motivation, because they are less interested in selling software than selling hardware and consultancy.

IBM aren't doing OSS just to get a lot of geeks to like them.

The best product is rarely the market leader.

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

This is just a delicate way of saying that Novell has vested too much in R&D. So sacrifice R&D to follow technologies that are already showning wide adoption. Novell has taken the lead in introducing now popular technologies like directory services, but has had trouble keeping marketshare. Why is that? Did R&D prevent prevent Novell's customers from getting something their competitors had? What is that exactly? It sounds to me like Novell is going the way of HP, but I hope they continue to make R&D enough of a priority.

It is a sad fact of life that possessing the best product in a marketplace is just a small fraction of the recipe for marketplace leadership.

So many other things are required for success: Marketing, execution [mind-numbing-ly boring stuff like making sure the trains run on time], the correctness of the underlying business model, plain old-fashioned good luck [like being in the right place at the right time]...

Very often, all you need is a minimally adequate product; after that, things like the business model, the execution of the business model, the marketing, and luck [good or bad] tend to prevail.

Re:For profits are like that

[benzapp]

I think this post speaks marvelously of how legalism is such a profound social disease. The term non-profit doesn't mean the organization doesn't make money. It means that for tax purposes, the corporation doesn't pay corporate income taxes.

Sure most people who work for non-profits make less than other companies, but the people at the top often do very well. They of course have an interest in perpetuating that. Further, this is a huge scandal these days as people at the top of these organizations are often making $1MM a year or more.