Novell Linux Business Spikes Since Microsoft Deal

StonyandCher writes "Novell's divisive deal with Microsoft has apparently resulted in some financial success for the company. PC World is now reporting that the company's Linux business has risen about 250% since the deal was announced last November. From the article: '[Novell director of marketing Justin Steinman] said part of its growth was directly related to the Microsoft deal, adding that Novell has billed more than US$100 million in business through its Microsoft relationship. He added that the growth was also due to the halo effect of the arrangement. "When we're out there competing with Red Hat, [our salespeople] are saying, 'Our Linux is recommended by Microsoft,' and customers that already have a Windows investment say it seems to make sense to pick the Linux that works with Windows."'"

Maybe there are other reasons

[LiquidCoooled]

It could be people are moving their business from SCO to Novell ;)
I don't know how much novell charges for their Linux but its got to be less than $650 per seat.

Marketing

[porkThreeWays]

and customers that already have a Windows investment say it seems to make sense to pick the Linux that works with Windows

Which is pure marketing because all the major distributions work equally well (or not well) with Windows. What I guess people still don't get is you pay for a support contract, not the distribution. All the major distributions are all basically of the same quality and use almost the exact same software. Maaaaaaybe a few configuration tools are different, but they are configuring the same software so it doesn't matter.

Talk about a PR scam...

[tgatliff]

If this isnt a PR pushed document, I dont know what is.... Of course Novell's business increased simply due to the fact of M$ handing out vouchers to people which M$ then ends up paying for when they give it to someone. What they would like to give the impression is that this makes people feel safe, so they go this route instead of the unsafe route with RedHat. You will also notice that they did not point out the Redhat had an amazing quarter as well with them attributing it to botched Vista rollout.... Hm... I wonder why they felt compelled to release this press release now?? :-)

Re:Marketing

[porkThreeWays]

I never said they were the same, I said they all use basically the same software and major distributions are all of very high quality. I wouldn't exactly call Linspire or Gentoo "major" distros, but RHEL/Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu/Debian, are all very very very similar. I've been working with Linux and Unix in general for over 10 years and once you know what's under the hood, you realize distro wars are silly because they are all basically the same. What differs are high level configuration tools and support contracts. Regarding Windows interoperability, do you think MS has hacked together some super compatible version of Samba for Novell that Red Hat or Ubuntu don't have access to?

Novell's taking advantage of dumb customers

[TemporalBeing]

"When we're out there competing with Red Hat, [our salespeople] are saying, 'Our Linux is recommended by Microsoft,' and customers that already have a Windows investment say it seems to make sense to pick the Linux that works with Windows."'"

So they're basically taking advantage of dumb customers that don't know much, if anything, about Linux as basically all Linux distros use the same software (e.g. Samba) - however, they vary in their packaging and support software & tools - to achieve that interoperability. It has nothing to do with being "blessed" by Microsoft - which is really just a death sentence - kind of like the one Hitler had in mind for Japan, and Italy, and the one he did try to carry out on Russia:

1. Make some "allies" and sign some "treaties"
2. Let your "allies" help you carry out your "war" on the "enemy"
3. Wipe out most everyone together with your "allies"
4. Turn on your "allies" one by one without telling the others
5. Wipe out your "allies" last when they are least suspecting it

Funny - Hitler had and Microsoft has the same basic plans. Just substitute "competitors" for "enemies" and "partners" for "allies".

Re:Clearly a piece of PR puff

[badfish99]

I've met plenty of Windows-centric IT people who seem to think networking is some sort of black magic

I'm not surprised. Getting two Windows boxes to talk to each other on a network is black magic.

Re:Marketing

[aichpvee]

What does any of this have to do with "working with windows?"

Re:Novell's taking advantage of dumb customers

[e4g4]

Hehe - looks like Godwin kicked in a little early in this discussion :P

Re:Marketing

[Penguinisto]

Ubuntu, on the other hand, requires roughly 3 hours of hacking and coding. Canonical has no interest whatsoever in making it play nice with Windows beyond implementing and supporting SMB.

Probably because Ubuntu and SuSE are aiming for two entirely different markets? (home desktop users v. enterprise business)?

Sort of like the reason why I wouldn't expect a typical Dell desktop to come with multiple hot-swap drive bays, two built-in NICs, or a RAID controller, nor would I expect a Dell server to come with a pair of GeForce 8800's in SLI configuration, y'know?

/P