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Red Hat Software Businesses

SAP invests in Red Hat 163

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-interesting dept.
Vic writes "SAP announced an equity investment of an undisclosed amount by the SAP Venture Fund in Red Hat Software, adding more support to the Linux bandwagon and the open source movement. " So SAP is big in Germany? Why would Red Hat be interested in Germany? Can you spell S.u.S.E?
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SAP invests in Red Hat More

SAP invests in Red Hat

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  • Tired of microsoft (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    well actuallly I have worked with SAP, the rumor on the street was that their alliance with MS was turning sour for the following reasons:
    1- SAP clients do not want NT to run their SAP app
    2- The technical relationship was strained
    3- Mainly do to the fact that NT is crap anyways

  • What does SAP mean? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In German: Systeme Andwendungen und Produkte. Which I think translates to "Systems, Applications and Products".

    Michel
    (SAP admin...)

  • So what of it? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do you know any other distribution that steadfastly GPLs all of their work (where do you think the RPM format does come from), has an entire Lab working on improving Linux for good and so on?

    Forget it. Caldera keeps much of its system closed. SuSE does not care much about open source and does not even open-source major system components of theirs like YaST.

    RedHat is the only commercial distribution that has a heavy track record of actively catering for free software under Linux.

    The only other distribution that would deserve supporting would be Debian, but there is nobody in particular that might accept money for services with regard to Debian.

    SuSE has had a bit of involvement in XFree86 development (mainly hiring one person for several months) which is to be applauded, but hardly compares to 6 people working on an entirely free desktop project.

    RedHat has serious commitment to free software, and it by now has serious support both by users and moneygivers. For this reason, it makes good business sense to throw even more money at it if one is interested in being guaranteed that Linux will be thriving in a few years. And those people throwing money at RedHat are planning to be investing much more money in the Linux market in development. It makes sense for them to have one fat provider. As long as RedHat keeps its serious dedication to free software, I am not worried.

  • WTF is SAP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I looked at the SAP web site, and they obviously have a product of thier own. I'll be damned if I can tell what the hell it does.

    Looks like a massive database of useless corprate information... Employee profiles, PO database, junk, and more junk. How is pilling all this junk together suppose to be a good thing? It's hard to even navigate the website to find them claim what the usefull features are...how could I believe thier software would be usefull?

    I am happy Red Hat has another investor.... But SAP seems to be a mess... What is suppose to be so great about them, and what is this product of thiers anyhow?

  • On thursday, 18th there was a press conference at the CeBit '99 in Hannover, Germany beeing helt jointly by Siemens Computer Systems, SAP and SuSE. During the presse conference Siemens and SAP praised the stability and reliability of SuSE Linux for the enterprise.
    Siemens wanted (according to the papers given to the journalists) announce SAP R/3 system based on Siemens Primergy Servers and SuSE Linux. SuSE Linux was according to these handouts considered to be the Linux distribution of choice for Siemens. (The main reason was quality of distribution, market share of SuSE in Europe, support of a modern GUI (KDE), language support and more trained personell in Europe)

    Siemens already did gain several PAYING customers who wanted a Linux based SAP R/3 solution.

    So what was the deal? Well simultaneously was a press conference of Oracle (CeBit is extremly big, about ten times bigger than Comdex, so there are many simultaneous press conferences). Oracle presented its new products running on Linux. Oracle made a strong commitment to Linux while telling the press the following: Oracle is ONLY going to give support for RedHat Linux until further notice.

    This news made it to the Siemens/SAP/SuSE press conference (a journalist came over to hall 1 and told the audience about the news). This same journalist questioned SAP about their policy. The SAP spokeman said that SAP wants to sell R/3 on Oracle database servers for Linux and SAP will always support the distribution which Oracle is choosing. On the other hand SAP sees Linux running on multiple hardware platforms to be the save haven for Unix because it is a major pain for SAP to support these many Unix platforms. (NT will not really make it in the high end market.) SAP is not much interested in supporting several flavours of Linux.

    The Siemens representative immediately said that Siemens primarily concern is to serve their customers and of course they will only provide vendor certified products (Oracle and SAP will certify their product for running on RedHat Linux).

    There was no doubt that the SuSE CEO looked like a pissed poodle

    Siemens saved the conference by giving away very nice little Penguin toys.

    So what happend from a technical point of view? Well when oracle decided to port their db to Linux they ask the market leader to supply them with the operating system and support. This distribution was of course RedHat (You know how these guys know how to hype vapour?!). Now RedHat played Microsoft tactics. Redhat gave Oracle a special never officially relased version of glibc-2.0.7 derivate which got hacked by RH. Of course Oracle NEVER ran stably on any other glibc based Linux distributions. The oracle engineers told the suits that Oracle db currently only runs reliable on RedHat Linux and that supporting the other distributions is a major pain and probably not worth the effort.

    After B. Young from RH heard about this coup he immediately arranged for a flight to Germany. He than met with SAP at the CeBit and arranged the investment deal.....

    So why should Oracle and SAP ever think about supporting anything else than Redhat after they invested money in Redhat and what seems to even more important (at least for SAP) they are NOT interested in diversity.

  • This is just the second step. The main SAP integrators, as least here in Europe, have decided to support SAP mainly on SuSE and, AFAIK, Debian. To be more wide-spreading about Linux distros it is obvious SAP now also supports RedHat.

  • Um... (Score:1)

    by davie ( 191 )

    The port was mentioned a few weeks ago, the investment announcement came out either yesterday or today, so it's news (good news).

  • Uh, all of them? Seriously, their platforms list is at http://www.sap.com/products/techno/t csm_pl.htm [sap.com].

  • You may be on to something there. I recall having read something about Microsoft adding more support for ERP apps a few weeks ago. I found this [microsoft.com] on the MS site. Looks like they may be "innovating" themselves into the ERP market one step at a time.

  • The biggest difference between distributions (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is the system library version. Some distributions are still based on libc5, while others (Red Hat, for one) have moved to glibc2. There are other differences that effect the way servers are started, etc. but they aren't that tough to work around, at least from what I've seen so far.

  • Let's wait and see. I think Red Hat are smart enough to know that one of the primary characteristics that made Linux, hence Red Hat, successful was "openness." I'm sure their investors are smart enough not to discount the value of goodwill on the part of the developer/user communities, so they're probably in sync with Red Hat's biz plan. If they blow it and go wildly non-standard, they'll tank and developers will move on to Debian or some other more ideologically pure distribution.

    A lot of the Bad Outcomes(TM) from the corporate investments folks are worried about probably won't happen, but we won't know for another year or two. At any rate, Red Hat don't own the code and the investors knew this from the outset, so I'm inclined to believe that this will all work out pretty well over the long haul.

  • You're quite correct... had I taken a moment to proofread my submission I would've realized that I had forgotten the word probably in the sentence which was supposed to read 'More important, in my estimation, than even Oracle, Sybase, etc... though it probably would've been impossible without them.

    What I meant to imply was that without other "enterprise" products coming to market it would seem unlikely for SAP to port their suite.

    Thank you for clarifying that quite nicely!

  • I doubt the implied SUSE conspiracy, SAP is huge. (Score:3)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Tuesday March 30, 1999 @11:07AM (#1956154) Homepage
    SAP, though many of you have not heard of it, is most likely the world's leading ERP software dealer. Many companies have hundred-million dollar contracts regarding SAP, this is an important milestone. More important, in my estimation, than even Oracle, Sybase, etc... though it would've been impossible without them.

    Something interesting to note at the moment is the mirroring of the current debates about linux on the desktop with debates about linux as a server about 3 years ago. The arguments are the same, the logic is the same. While I believe it's only a matter of time until Linux lights a fire on the desktop, I believe that our previous focuses, the ones about improving the system, debugging it, and attempting to make the most configurable, robust and stable system will take us even further.

    Thank you, SAP, for making an honest evaluation and coming to the obvious (to most slashdotters anyway) conclusions regarding Linux's viability as an enterprise class operating system.
  • Wow.. it says they believe its ready for mission critical application. If you read the WindowsNT eula, it states NOT TO USE IN MISSION CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT. Therefore I guess Linux has even one more up on M$, considering it CAN be used in mission critical, while NT cant. Sorta goes along w/ M$'s statement in the eula about "If data is lost because of this application, Microsoft is not responsible." and M$'s statements about who to sue if Linux breaks.
  • IIRC, I read somewhere that SAP is the largest software company in the world, in terms of revenues. They're the reason that Oracle advertises in their ads that they're the second largest software company.

    And, no, the largest is not Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of desktops, but one or two big-company installations of SAP's software bring them more revenue than all of Microsoft's sales of NT, 98, and IIS combined.
  • Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:

    So is David Hasslehoff.

    So much Noise...
    and yet,
    Some Noise is better than others

  • Um... (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    SAP is big period. It only comes from Germany...

    Besides, wasn't this mentioned/announced a week or two ago?

  • Somewhat off topic, I know, but what does it mean? I'm not really big on databases, so I don't keep track of the names of companies and db lingo... Thanks.

  • Blackhawk wrote:
    If Red Hat and its people are "good and true" members of the community, their behavior will show them to be such, and we'll rightly respect them. If they aren't, a watchful eye now will serve us better than a thousand voices raised in protest later.

    RedHat has shown themselves to be "good and true". All of their software development is released as open source, they have paid developers working on GNOME and KDE, and they're continuing to evangelize Linux to the suits, while making huge inroads into making an easy to use for Joe Q. Public distro. They did not, for example, take the easy way out in the desktop game, and "embrace and extend" CDE.

    Will people please stop with this raving paranoia and actually wait until there's something to be paranoid about? :-)

  • The Linux distributions aren't really one OS; the lowest common denominator is the Linux kernel. All distributions use a mix of the Linux kernel, GNU utilities, (frequently) in-house developed software, and (sometimes) commercial third-party software.

    In binary compatibility terms, all x86 Linux distributions can run the same binaries (well, *cough*, we'll leave out little things like a.out, ELF, libc5 and libc6, to keep this simple). However, most have very different filesystem layouts, ways of starting software at boot, etc.

    This doesn't even cover the fact that all major distributions use a different packaging scheme (RPM, pkg, deb).

    So, the short answer is that there are enough differences between Linux distributions to make ports between distributions, if only to deal with filesystem & package differences, necessary.

    Not all is lost, though ;-) These are things that some people are working to standardize in order to offer more base compatibility between distributions.

  • LSB (Score:1)

    by mha ( 1305 )
    The problem is that no longer 'Linux' is the brand name but 'RedHat' is.

    It's bad for competition between distributions. It doesn't matter how good or bad other distributions really are and how much effort the others spend (or don't spend), _the name_ is not RedHat and therefore they will have less and less (ifthis trend continues) chances to compete successfully with RedHat. Who's going to use SAP on another distro than Redhat now? I know of a big company that used another distribution on their systems where they wanted to test SAP R/3 on Linux, since that distribution was the only one to support there hardware (special patch that's only in very recent kernels and therefore on very few boot disks, of course _after_ installation it's always easy) AND (much more important to them than which-distribution-is-the-best gossip) they had direct contact to the makers of the distribution who also supported them very well, but they where forced to use RedHat now although they didn't want to.

    The discussion wether it makes sense to support just one distribution instead of doing what Oracle did (saying which kernel+libc version is upported) is senseless, because it doesn't even take place, no chance, because the (more and more successfully developed due to brilliant RedHat marketing) RedHat brand name already decides the issue for them, no technological arguments or competition between distributions necessary.


    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]

  • Ahhh, another typical AC posting... strange that exactly THIS one appears on slashdot again and again... (special mark: the claim about what RMS has said, which is anything but true because he didn't say did, it's not even close) there must be a _very_ lonely and aggressive child somewhere out there using the anonymity of the Internet to hurt others. An answer based on facts and reason seems senseless, unfortunately. Poor track record of SuSE, haha. Look at the kernel sources (but the SuSE people rarely use their SuSE-email address) and lots of other programs out there, and _especially_ look at XFree86, where SuSE has a leading role in development.
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
  • I dohn't understand that part about the special glibc.... Oracle is alive and well on my SuSE based server (I also use RedHat, no preference).
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
  • From the Oracle press release (18 March 99), section "Oracle Support for Linux":

    Oracle has formed strategic relationships with major Linux vendors-including Caldera Systems Inc., Pacific HiTech, Penguin Computing, Red Hat Software, S.u.S.E. Linux, and VA Research Linux Systems.
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]

  • they bundle proprietary shit because it's good proprietary shit....

    it's a good distro overall, and superior to redhat in some aspects, imho. BUT if you dont like the mix of free/proprietary, dont use it
  • I'm glad Redhat's getting all the investment dough, but SuSE really does deserve some too. I just installed 6.0... sweet distro.

    And another thing...SAP is big *today*, but I really gotta wonder about the future... I mean, sure it's nice to integrate your line-of-business systems, but A) SAP is clunky and annoying (ask any engineer working on it), B) It doesn't give the business SQUAT for analytical power, C) many businesses are buying it because their current enterprise systems aren't Y2K enabled, and need something to hold the fort.

    The *real* stuff is with those OLAP engines & data warehouses... I'd love to see OLAP engines or multidimensional DB's on linux.... even some of the query tools like Cognos' ... (if we want Linux to be on the corporate desktop).
  • SAP already did port some of their suite to Linux. Currently they're looking for good Linux hackers to hire... If you're interested, go to their website and look through the jobs offers.

  • As someone whose Unix education began with Linux, and ended there, can anyone explain me what are these features that make commecrcial Unices so much better than Linux? The only things I can think of now are journaled FS, ACLs, and high-end SMP scalability, all of which Linux doesn't (yet) have. But what is this "dev elopment environment" you're talking about? And what else do I miss?
  • YES!

    Wait a minute . . . France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malasia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand . . . there are no jobs in the U.S.! Doh and double doh! I like living here to much to give it up, at least for a country whose language I don't speak fluently (i.e. I would consider Mexico. Oye Miguel, ?Hay trabajo en la UNAM pa' los aficionados gringos del Linux? ;).

    The East Asian connection is interesting. I wonder why they have so many bases there. Is it a matter of providing on-site support?

    --- My sig's still screwed up. Slashdot keeps stripping the HTML tags. It's a sigfault (their fault, not mine).
    ---


    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product

  • Oh damn. I just looked again, and all the developers' jobs are in Germany. Triple doh! Anyway, I'm sure they'll find ample talent. Linux is pretty damn big in Germany.

    Doh, doh, doh!

    Signituration fault: core dumped.
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product

  • This is mostly true. The main problem right now is the glibc/libc5 issue; glibc binaries won't run on libc5 systems, and libc5 binaries are generally flaky on glibc systems. That's becoming mostly a moot point; Red Hat, Debian, and SuSE are glibc, with Caldera and Slackware rushing madly to get there.

    However, most of the commercial vendors only commit to support one distro. So, if the vendor supports Red Hat and you install on Debian, you're on your own. It'll most likely work like a charm, but don't expect SAP (or whoever) to support you.

    I think it was Oracle that broke with the pack by supporting a baseline: 2.0.36 kernel and glibc 2.0.7. This allowed the user to pick their favorite distro - even Debian - and get support. This is the best way, IMHO.
  • RedHat is certainly the most visible dist out there from a suit perspective. Since this is all so new, expect them to change after they figure out what dists really are ;-)

    Hopefully we will also see companies take Oracles lead and have a baseline kernel/C lib instead of a dist name for support (as mentioned in a previous post).

    Give these people time... they don't change their way of business very fast. They aren't used to 'OS' patches coming every 2 weeks ;-)
  • Hopefully the LSB or something like it will refer to a publicly available test suite for Linux distributions. Commercial application developers would ideally support distributions that are in compliance with the test suite and help add to the suite when they see a problem.
  • This means that either SAP doesn't make much use of relational functionality and they probably are actually caching (or copying) the DB on their middle tier (which is true AFAIK).
    (...)
    R/3 seems to be still from the age before relational DBMS.
    This could also mean that they have a nice object-oriented database-scheme and map this model onto a relational database to use the rdbm's transaction model and (perhaps more important) to please IT managers who want their data on "a reliable database". OODBMS->RDBMS mappings have the same characteristics.
  • The reason for this investment could be that SAP is afraid of Microsoft. Microsoft has shown several times that they are able to capture almost every market. And ERP seems to be a very lucrative business so they might do the same thing with SAP that they did with Oracle (SQL Server), Netscape (Internet Explorer & IIS), to Lotus (Exchange) and all the other markets. They capture huge a amount of market shares just by their presence.

  • Redhat, because they are a business (you know they have wages to pay, shareholders they are responsible to, this is a real world concept(tm)) are unwilling to commit to something that is *PURE VAPOR*.

    Describe to me the requirements of LSB compliance.
    You cannot. It does not exist. Now if Bob Young was to commit to something that is completely unspecified - dontya think that his employees, shareholders and *customers* would be just a wee bit ticked off at his stupidity.

    Example {for the obviously clue challenged pimple-faced Slashdot paranoid troll}: to be a 'genuine GNU loving Linux user' you have to agree to do foo - ohh but we are going to tell you what foo is until 6 months from now. Sign up *NOW*.

    Six months later it turns out foo is participation in a Jonesville style statement at 'the evils of proprietary software.'

    Dont be an idiot. Dont drink the Kool-Aid. Bob Young is AFAIK no idiot.


    {Sigh}
  • s/are going to tell/are ==not== going to tell/


    Dontya hate it when a tyop ruins a good flame...

  • Could you please enlighten me as to just what the hell you're talking about with respect to RPM? RPM 1.x was written in *perl*. By definition it was 'open'. RPM 2.x was re-written in C but was always open as well.


    --Donnie
  • Since I work at the largest SAP-HR company of holland, i know a bit about SAP. Not much, but a bit..heh..anyway, I am gradually getting linux inside this company, and well, finally SAP is going to Linux. Sap already runs on HPUX, other Unixes, and windows NT.
    I will probably get a beta copy of it soon, so if i do, ill test it, and let you all know how it runs.

  • LSB (Score:1)

    by seva ( 5510 )
    Would you people stop talking about secret plots
    by RH to take Linux over, it's just stupid.

    RH is part of LSB, and when LSB becomes usabale
    it won't matter which distribution you have.

    /Seva
  • I heard of a Linux port of SAP R/3 quite some time ago (maybe 5 months), but it was an unofficial, unsupported port then (sort of like Quake1/2). It's just that recently SAP decided to make that an official port with company support (after lots of requests from people who want R/3 on Linux).
  • ... or not actually correct, but to give some more data: first rumors of SAP R/3 for Linux were on the newsticker of Heise in october.

    See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/search.shtml?T=SAP+ Linux (German text only)
  • They HAVE ported to Linux. I posted a story on this yesterday but no one at /. thought it was worth posting.... =)

    The link I have is this article [sap.com]

  • Red Hat has attracted lots of outside investment now. Unfortunately, outside investment can lead to outside control if things aren't managed very carefully. SAP is going to be more comfortable with traditional, proprietary software company management than with Red Hat's approach of putting the software they develop under the GPL.

    Much the same thing happened to Cygnus. At one time, everything Cygnus did was freeware (GPL, LGPL, etc). As they grew and hired more folks from the traditional software industry, and started thinking about going public, "value added" thinking started to take hold. Now they've got proprietary products and one of their founders, Mike Tiemann, now says that infrastructure should be free but applications should be proprietary.

    Red Hat may come under increasing pressure to create proprietary "value-added" pieces (or, as RMS likes to say, "freedom subtracted") to improve their competitive position.

    One could argue that this is OK as long as the GPL version of Red Hat is a complete system. But the old-time Red Hat folks might have to fight their new investors to keep this.

  • Boring suit type stuff, but the ERP market is running out of space to grow into. Most of the companies who can afford to spend the kinds of money required for SAP, Baan, Peoplesoft or what have you, have already done so.
    So, these guys have to move down the food chain to the smaller companies, who can't afford $2000 a day for an "Implementation Partner" - these firms want to buy something off the shelf and have it working without any hassle.
    Now, if I were SAP, I would look at the NT server license, the MS client licenses, the fact that NT (and the other MS software) shifts shape with Service Packs etc. every other day, and the trouble MS is having releasing Win2K, and a bet on linux becomes a lot more attractive - you could literally put Linux, a database and app server pre-configured with "Small business SAP" on a $10K Intel box, ship it, and have a small firm up and running with minimal effort.
    Course, this is just hypothesis, and I know more about Peoplesoft than SAP, but these guys are getting squeezed for space to grow, and their shareholders are still expecting nice big revenue figures.
  • Here is a random, and flame-provoking thought :
    In some ways,you could view the ERP market as a weird version of the open source thing -
    The ERP vendor (SAP, Peoplesoft, Baan) ships source code to the client (this is the way these things work).
    The client either leaves it alone and uses it out of the box, hacks it themselves to do what they want, or employs "partners" to do it for them - essentially a service company making money out of understanding the source code better than the client.
    The fact that money changes hands does not really matter, but that the licensing is often restrictive clearly scuppers a direct analogy. However, I am pretty sure that for many implementations, the cost of the software is only a part of the cost - a SAP consultant often runs at around $1000-2000 per day. A lot of companies, both big and small, are making money out of implementing SAP and other ERP packages.
    Compare : Linux is open source, and companies like RH or S.u.S.e make money by understanding the source better than their clients, or making it simply more convenient to use/install/configure.
    So, who wants to bet on SAP reinventing themselves as a service company, supplying the software for a minimal amount, and concentrating on charging for implementation/customization ?

    time to return to the real world.

  • Well, look at the big players - all have had a pretty rough time on Wall Street recently. And everybody knows they have run out of places to go - the companies who can afford million dollar implementations are just running out.
    Peoplesoft ( the company I know best ) is responding partly by creating "partnerships" all over the shop - but is that enough ? Their software is pretty smart, and a lot easier to work with than SAP, but it makes me furious most of the time - so much hard coding, so few common functions, etc. So, perhaps this software is not really worth quite so much - perhaps it is the membership to club that matters ? And how is that different from the "membership" to the linux club ? Oh, except for cost, of course...both require a substantial dedication, a leap of faith, a commitment to stick with the product...
  • At the Company I work for, we have used SAP for quite a number of years now. The "NEW" direction is to move away from our AIX and Solaris boxes to Windows NT. However, with all the news about Linux, I have been put on a committee to evaluate Linux and its place here in this company. I've already heard today after reading this article, that they are thinking of Linux instead of NT. This is a GOOD thing.

    IMHO, any big company exposure to Linux can only help the Linux cause, not hurt it.

    I now use my Linux laptop for dial in support instead of having to rely on my Windows box because SAP did not have a port of its GUI. I downloaded it last week and have since installed it and it work great. Just the MSCHAP stuff is giving me fits.

    I will reserve comments about RedHat becoming the next Microsoft and SAP suck comments because that is the kind of talk that will hurt the Linux cause. If people view Linux'ers as complete anti-Microsoft bigots, it does hurt Linux in the suits eyes. I'm definitely NOT defending Micro$oft and its tactics, I would just like to help Linux get into companies such as mine. Now that SAP backs Linux, it truly does stand a chance of getting used here.
  • Could someone do me a favour and describe what SAP does that's so special?

    I mean, whenever I hear SAP, I hear:

    • It powers an entire enterprise
    • It's very customizable
    • It's very hard to learn and use
    • It costs boatloads of money
    So why not just hire in-house programmers to do a totally customized solution instead? With the prices they charge, you could certainly do a lot.

    D
    ----

  • this isn't really relavent to the story but I am just so very happy that ms hasn't been able to make intuit fold yet =o)
    I am still waiting for the big "quicken for linux" story. The real one this time....
  • Right now, if you were to look at the applications that move hardware for the big mini/mainframe vendors such as IBM, Sun, and HP, I would guess that way up on the list is ERP packages like SAP, Baan, and JC Edwards as well as PeopleSoft.

    Sure all of these packages theoretically run on NT, but right now that's sorta the Loss Leader to get the customers in the door. Once there, they figure pretty quickly that NT (and MS SQL) is not up to the task.

    Enter Linux - Possibly a way to get these huge applications to run on relatively cheap hardware. The big win is going to be for Compaq and Dell, and the folks who can get the integration services done.

    Of course, a couple years down the road, when IA64 is established, there's going to be little or no reason to run these big apps on Solaris/IA64 or HP-UX/IA64 versus Linux/IA64. The big minicomputer vendors are running head on into the commodtized hardware market, where there's a perfectly good and free OS waiting for them. It's going to be interesting to see if they can stay in business.
    --

  • Well congradulations Redhat.

    I hope you will continue to maintian your ftp distributions as you have in the past.

    I have tried SuSE and although YaST is the best setup tol around, there 6.0 Distribution is slower than Redhat's 5.1 Distro, on the same machine(Mine!). The simple fact is the best OS will win. I am beginning to see that Redhat is the one, and why. As other companies are also seeing this. I have tried several other distros, and they all ahve there plusses, but Redhat simple ahs more backing. Unlike M$ thou Redhat is not threatening other companies into backing them.

    keep it up.

  • Look at the dependacies of RH and SuSE they are not the same.... SuSE still links many packages with tcl7.6 & tk 4.2 while RH has done away with that. Also SuSE does more Static linking of binaries, than RH. I am talking a noticable 'end user' difference where apps actually 'feel' slower. It has nothing to do with the kernel! you need to really get into the various distributions and see what they ar all about before you can bash someone for what they have noticed. Go to Linux mall and get a RH Cdrom and a SuSE 1.89 cdorm SuSE gives an incomplete "Evaluation" cdrom. Then start looking at the deps of the rpms in the 2 cdrom.. you will startt to see the light.. then look at where the executables are stored, kde on SuSE is in /opt/kde with /opt/netscape, then look at where RH stores its Netscape exe.. /usr/X11R6/bin maybe???? They are different !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • SAP isn't just big in Germany, you know. It's the number one ERP developer worldwide. Everything is going to SAP, there's tons of money falling into SAP development, and if SAP were actually to port to Linux, it would be a real coup.
  • The trade rags have been saying that ERP/corporate system spending is down generally, as 99 capital expenditure dollars are being spent on fixing Y2K cruft, not on new system investments.

    This probably hurts SAP disproportionately.

  • Maybe I'm misparsing your message, but it sounds like you are saying that Michael Tiemann's comments about infrastructure vs. applications are a very bad thing. However, you work for a proprietary software company yourself (not that this is a shameful thing, I do too - but it seems unfair to hold Cygnus to a higher standard).

    As for Red Hat being controlled by outside investors, I think the founders are being _very_ careful to sell only small minority stakes. Both RH and the investors are looking at these investments as more meaningful in strategic and political terms than in strictly financial terms.

    Incidentally, I think the Cygnus pendulum is swinging back towards free software somewhat - I remember there were a few years when they did their best to expunge their web site and marketing materials of any reference to the fact that their code was free. Now they play up the open source angle in almost every press release.
  • I agree that MS hasn't done much against Oracle. But remember most MS products suck, and that hasn't stopped them before.

    I see Oracle on Linux eventually being the defacto small to medium sized database platform. The stability of SQL server and Win-NT make this very likely. We can only hope.
  • You're right about SAP being big-big-big, but that doesn't mean that SAP is doing as well as you'd think. Take a look at their stock prices [cnnfn.com] over the last 52 weeks. It's fallen by more than half over that period. (As of today, 3/30/1998, anyway.)
  • True, SAP is multinational, and Red Hat does have the momentum, in spite of Caldera's claim to being more "corporate-oriented." The truth is, there are more apps being written primarily to Red Hat. This is very much in keeping with what we discussed a few days ago on Slashdot regarding Red Hat's aims for the market and the community.

    But I would like to ask at what point does an entity's behavior become "a plot"? When do we state, "Alright, we have enough examples of behavior to make a statement about the pattern of behavior"?

    I don't pretend to know what is in the collective mind of Red Hat. And frankly, I like Red Hat. The distro I'm experimenting with is Mandrake, based on Red Hat. But we do need to watch the players in the early game, as we are now in. Their moves will dictate the shape of the mid-game. And I wonder what might have been had there been some serious scrutiny of MS in their early days. Would we now be going through the DOJ trial, the "MS Tax" on new computers?

    If it seems that we're being harsh on Red Hat, well, we have the example of Microsoft to be wary of. If Red Hat and its people are "good and true" members of the community, their behavior will show them to be such, and we'll rightly respect them. If they aren't, a watchful eye now will serve us better than a thousand voices raised in protest later.

  • I agree it is good that linux is getting support wether it's RH,Debian or other distro's. RH is not my choice though you can make any linux work for you if you have the time to work with it. The SuSE 6.0 distrobution is the best I've seen yet and will be using it for a while. I haven't tried debian but maybe L8R. Live Long And Linux
    LAZZZ
  • I remember I was very happy back in october (november?) when I read at /. about the netscape and intel investment, so happy that I found it unbelievable. Things have changed a lot since then, and this pattern has repeated several times.

    The news about linux gaining momentum were also wonderful, but the futher investments in RedHat by IBM, HP, etc.. and now SAP do worry me, and they should worry you too. Selling out and betraying the open source spirit is completely out of question, but this neglection of the other distributions so openly displayed by the investors is more than worrying. Don't get me wrong - I like RedHat and have always used it, but:
    if you want to buy server from Dell, HP, Compaq, IBM,SAP, even Sun and you want linux, all that you'll get will be redhat. Since these companies are the ones that shape the corporate market anyway, the possibility of those making the decisions for big corporations to remain completely ignorant about the great diversity of distributions, and which is worse, they will become ignorant about the possibility of compiling and building a linux system from the scratch. Since the corporate market shapes somewhat the overall direction of software progress, this situation might have some unpleasant long term consequences.

    I do hope, however, that redhat will be succesful in meeting the needs of that market and not forget that it is one of several distributions.
  • what are you smoking? I like Linux just fine, but
    for full scale dev env it's not even in same
    ballpark as DUNIX, Solaris or HP, I'll let AIX
    out, since I have not used it in a long time, and
    wasn't impressed when I did. Please - buy a clue
  • Afraid of M$, probably, but m$ hasn't taken a huge
    cut of the DB market, and they never will SQL Server sucks !
  • wrong! Linux runs on Compaq with several different
    flavours besides Red Hat, get your facts straight!
  • It's only a matter of time before HP, Compag, Dell, etc., come to an understanding of Linux. When they do, you will see these manufacturers preloading their own custom distributions.
  • We use SAP at my work. The suit types adore it. The engineers hate it. From what I understand, this is true everywhere it is used.

    Every seen a grown hacker cry while using SAP? I have, and it's not a pretty site. It's a twist on FIFO. First in, first to be lost in a bewildering query mechanism.
  • I talked to a SuSE employee at the CeBit. They plan to go public soon.

    For what it is worth he told me that SuSE is committed to LSB but he said he has his doubts when it comes to RH's commitment. I mentioned to him that relying on revenues from distros is not a healthy profit strategy and he agreed saying that this part of the revenue is already shrinking and the service part growing.

    To drive the point home I told him that I might switch to Debian, because I want to comfortably update via ftp. He was meentioning that I could do that with SuSE, but once I tried it with a pre-SuSE 6.0 and killed my system. So I rather give Debian a shot now that I feel a little bit more comfortable in administring my own Linux (Note: I am using it for more than 3 years now).

    So if anybody wants to invest in a public traded Linux distro company, check out when SuSE is doing their IPO. I assume they will have an IPO at the "Neuer Markt" stock exchange in Frankfurt. An electronic stock exchange designed comparable to NASDAQ.

    The European stock exchanges are going to be consolidated into one electronic market soon, but already a competent bank should be able to get your stock traded in Euro at the "Neuer Markt" exchange.

    Hey, you don't even have to send me money for this investment tip ;-) Take it from a "suit" who works for free occasionally.
  • The thing that makes me gladdest to hear about this is that now people will have a chance to run SAP on an imminently scalable platform (various clustering solutions) that is easily remote-administerable. I have watched people trying to deal with huge NT server farms and it was a nightmare! I think they're going to be extremely glad to do that under an OS that is designed to be used remotely.


    Herbert von Kammerstein

  • SAP R/3 on Linux does not require database support for Linux... the app server is on Linux while the db server could be on anything from SQL Server on NT to DB2 on a 390.
  • Distinguish between proprietary in the sense of someone owning it and proprietary in the sense of someone hiding it.

    SAP already ships source code to all of it's customers, along with the ability to use SAP development tools or someone elses to modify it as they wish. If SAP customers wish to share their extensions or modifications, they are fully able to do that.

    The fact still remains that someone has to pay for right to benefit from the application. This is not an OS, not a utility, but a mission critical application platform used to run large businesses. That software is used to create efficiencies and ultimately competitive advantages that realize those companies financial benefit.
  • 1. probably not
    2. Through each investment round the valuation of the company grows (hopefully). The previous investors can contribute in subsequent rounds pro rata to preserve their share, or not and have their share diluted. When RH, or any company, files to go public with their S1 you can see who owns what.
    3. Yes it is possible, but you have to be able to articulate what you are going to do for the company you are investing in. Companies do not just take money that is offered to them, they have to determine how active the potential investor will be and what value add they will contribute.
    3a. Is corporate ownership bad?
    3b. Absolutely
  • for a look at the new UI initiative
  • At over US$5 billion in revenue, SAP is the largest enterprise application vendor worldwide. Oracle is larger in total revenue, but their application business is less than $1b. Microsoft is the largest software vendor worldwide in terms of total software sales. IBM's software business is significantly large as well, but you have to break out the numbers to rank it.
  • implementation costs typically run 3-4x the software license cost. The problem for app vendors, like SAP, is that Wall St. looks to top line license revenue growth as the benchmark. Service revenue is lower margin than licenses. Furthermore, if you grow service revenue you can create channel conflict with the integrators.
  • The management, board of directors, investors and potential investors know how much is invested - it's in the capitalization table that is provided with the term sheet, purchase docs and other material.

    The investment community doesn't make token investments, we put money to work to earn a significant return on investment. The hard truth is that it's not worth the time to invest for trivial percentages when other opportunities are available - it just takes too much time and effort.
  • I'm relatively new to linux, so slap me if I seem out of line, but isn't one of the main points of linux that you can write things for linux, and you don't have to port to each different distribution? If a program written for one distro won't work with another, then how exactly are they the same OS?

    Thanks.

    kmj

  • SAP is a big deal everywhere, not just Germany. They obviously like Red Hat's business side. This isn't some secret plot by RH to kill SuSE. SAP is new to linux so it is going with the market leader.
  • This is an ugly market that I think will jade most of the linux and OSS community but this is great news. This is the million dollar app business, much worse than how we visualize MS... THis is the old school "IBM in the 60's" type business. SAP has the killer apps for enterprises right now, if you buy a 390, you generally put SAP on it. It runs on a ton of lower end equipment too and linux should be on that list. If world domination is the plan, then this is a key step in it.

    FWIW, if you're running UNIX, linux is just a comfortable and pleasant unix to run. It's much more usable than AIX, HPUX, DecUNIX, Solaris, etc.. The GNU tools make a lot of difference. I can't think of too many reasons why you wouldn't want to run linux if you're a unix user. The only real gaps in linux coverage (aside from support for commercial unix apps, which is going away) is the highend but most people don't have highend stuff. Typically SAP runs on a mid range UNIX workstation (I'm pretty sure that's what most r3 installs are on) so if that is a $50,000 workstation, ~$5,000 of that is in the OS. Replace it with linux and you get a better environment and you knock a substantial amount off the price. SAP certainly knows this, their UNIX developers have experienced it first hand becuase if they are like any other shop, half of them have linux at home.

    Like it or not, Linux is going to be the enterprise platform of the 2000's, it's too good, and too cheap. Whether or not any of us like enterprise computing is another matter..


  • SAP is the second Largest Software company in the world, right behind IBM

    Umm... Maybe I've missed something, but I could have sworn that Microsoft was the largest software company in the world. SAP *used* to be no. 2, but (at least according to their TV adds) I think that Oracle has the number 2 spot now. That would put SAP at number three, if even that high.

    And IBM? I really don't know where they fall in the Top Ten List of software companies. I'll check with Letterman...
  • They have already started porting their suite of applications. I imagine also the backend. This is particularly important because last year it seemed that an "iron alliance" was in the making between SAP and Microsoft to push NT. I guess SAP is afraid of WIN2K.

  • SAP (Score:1)

    by Teelo ( 27540 )
    Yep, you could certainly do a lot with the money, but nevertheless you could not write a fairly complete, although difficult, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). SAP is in the market of ERP since more than ten years, and they did acquire some expertise in that field. It is definitely much cheaper to go with SAP R/3 than writing and maintaining and customizing and extending your own system...

  • Hmmm, (Score:1)

    by Tony-A ( 29931 )
    Consider this possibility. IBM, Oracle, SAP et al never see a dime return on their investment in Red Hat. Any direct return on their investment would be insignificant on their bottom line. If they are able to depend on a stable, supported, and supportable OS, the impact on their bottom line can be enormous. This looks a bit like IBM, Oracle, SAP et al doing to Microsoft what Microsoft did to Netscape. Red Hat is not a non-profit organization, at least not yet, but it does act somewhat like one. At any rate it is *not* a get-rich-quick scheme.
    The only problem I can see with Open Source, Free Source, or whatever you call it, is how to fund it. These big boys may have figured out that it is to their advantage that it *be* funded, and decided to chip in. There is a lot of work still to be done, methinks, dull, boring and expensive.
    Think of Red Hat as carrying the Linux flag for the benefit of corporate management, PHBs, and suits. The "fragmentation" of un*x is more apparent than real, but will bother corporate types. (Compare libc versions to DLL versions -- now exactly *which* version of windows are you running? If you need incompatible versions running together, nothing like statically linked libraries -- do I have that right?)
    Red Hat becoming another M$? With Cheapbytes, "knock-off" distros, and free downloads, no way. Besides, the big boys would *not* like it.
    One mild caution. This cannot be a "change of heart" of the big boys. I cannot imagine the big boys willingly supporting a "hacker's OS". They are not interested in free (speech *or* beer). However, there is a large common ground in having a base level that is *not* wonky, *not* flakey, *is* well known and understood. If it is not messed up too badly, everybody (except Microsoft) gains.
    Yep, these are exciting times.
  • OK, I'll try a shot at putting this into perspective. This is a bit exagerated for effect. This is coming from second and third generation mainframe experience.
    With mainframes, or other big iron, the situation is "little computer, big problem", so you throw everything you can afford at it.
    With PCs, the situation is "big computer, little problem", more like a toy.
    Current PCs have much more power than second generation mainframes, but they do not come close to doing what was done on those second generation mainframes.
    Mainframes attract what you *must* do. You have to solve all the problems.
    PCs attract what you *want* to do. You solve a few easy or interesting problems.
    This doesn't automatically make a mainframe OS better or more reliable, but there is a suble distinction in what is a bug and what is an unacceptable bug. Above all, a mainframe OS must perform under load, heavy load. With a PC, the idea of load doesn't really come up. There are real differences and apparent differences and hidden differences, with no good way to sort them out. These differences cannot be seen from the PC side. They exist in places where PCs don't have places. It is more subtle than features. NT has features, ... well the appearance of features.
    The commercial Unices are pretty well proven under load. Linux is unproven, but that situation is changing. Beowulf proved a few things.
    Hope this helps a bit. Hang on to your hat, red or otherwise, these are interesting times.
  • Amen from the chorus.
    Red Hat is taking the point, the cutting (bleeding?) edge. (but not as bloody as NT ;-)
    Red Hat is marketing Linux to the suits.
    World Domination? Looks more and more plausible, but it is *NOT* a Red Hat domination. It is not a Debian domination. It is not a FreeBSD domination. It a domination of computers, of computers that work, of computers that do what they are supposed to do. It is a domination of computer by mankind, not the other way around.
    Maybe I'm dreaming, or hoping, but this keeps looking better and better.
  • In addition to what Tony-A has to say, in large enterprises with ERP and Database Transaction servers there are two primary considerations- transaction speed and scalability. The proprietary Unix systems are usually built on propietary hardware ( Solaris being the major exception). These systems scale to a large number of processors ( 128 processors for HP-Unix, Solaris, and SGI). They often have higher bandwidth capabilities ( Gigabytes/sec throughput). They have tremendous reliability and combine that with huge numbers of transactions per second. They are still not as reliable, nor as fast, as the mainframes- though they are improving quickly.
  • I read the Compaq Vs. RH story, and the MS-behavior is not obvious to me. Okay, so they don't feel that support for Alpha is important. Note that they aren't dropping the platform entirely. Even if they did, Compaq could start up their own distribution.

    Nowhere in that story do I see Red Hat threatening anyone who deals with competitors. Compaq is using multiple Linux distributions. Compaq/Red Hat relationships are strained. No cause and effect are implied.

    Most importantly, Red Hat _can't_ ruin Compaq's day. In the worst-case scenario, Red Hat pulls every scrap of Alpha code from its next distribution. Compaq can either branch off from an older RH, can go with a distribution that supports Alpha, or go into the Linux distribution biz themselves. They have more than enough Unix engineers for that!

    With MS, the problem is that you have no option. They can cut you off, and you are no longer in the Windows computing biz. Nobody can cut anybody off from the Linux biz, even Red Hat.
  • 1) What is proprietary to redhat that will keep
    codewarrior from running on any other dist. of linux since everything they do is 100% open source??

    2) Use whatever distribution you like, but without
    RMS, we'd still be at 2.2.5 as Linus would've simply used BSD-style tools. Contrary to popular
    myth...other tools DID exist before RMS wrote GPL'd ports.

    3) You obviously have no idea what you're talking about and you're only serving up more FUD that has no place here. RedHat is not the enemy.
  • First, Linux is linux is linux. Regardless of the
    distribution. If you don't understand that, then stop reading and reboot into Windows right now.

    RedHat's name plastered on the product is NOT RedHat's fault...you should blame Metrowerks. But no, your kind assumes that you should label RedHat as "evil" since they make a profit from Linux.

    Nevermind they've not done anything anti-competitive and they give away source to the code they pay people to write, you apparently don't like them for being successful.

    Fine. Don't use their distribution.

    However, you're not being attacked by me.

    You prove that,
    while you have concerns, you don't see the big
    picture. It is impossible for a 100% open source
    company that gives everything it does back to the community to be another Microsoft. It cannot happen. If other companies associate Linux with RedHat, so be it, but it's not RedHat's fault nor should they be blamed.
    Your lack of comprehension amazes me, but your assinine opinion does not.

    I also do not reject the contributions of the GNU project (I've run linux for four years exclusively). However, I could've run BSD and gotten a very nice Un*x clone that is *not* GPL'd if I chose to.

    You're entitled to your opinions, but spreading general FUD (RedHat is gonna be another Microsoft! RedHat is evil for making any money!) is wrong, pointless, and not very smart.

    Don't get mad at the community for pointing out
    that you're opinion is based in misconception and
    ignorance.

    The End.
  • I just couldn't let this go...

    > I'm sure you hate the term "Gnu/Linux" -- that
    > would be bad, eh? But perhaps "Redhat Linux" is > perfectly acceptable?? Hypocrites!

    No, I say Linux. If anyone else says GNU/Linux,
    Debian Linux, Slackware Linux, or I couldn't care less. I realize something you don't; */Linux==LINUX.

    You say "RedHat, and it's supporters, have apparently become GNU/FSF detractors and I will not longer tolerate that." Where is your proof???
    They GPL EVERYTHING THEY DO. Good grief, Charlie
    Brown, you've got nothing to base this on!! Show me something they've written that they haven't GPL'd and I'll eat my (Red) hat.

    > I do post anonymously, since I fear attacks from > vehement people like yourself.

    Attacks == People with a clue pointing out that
    I'm unable to substantiate my opinions with fact.
    I don't blame you; I wouldn't want my name on what you've posted either.

    Ok, now I'm done.
  • Well he says "I can't find support for my statement about RPM anywhere in the news archives. So, I will say that it must have been something else."

    Yeah, complete and utter horseshit.

    Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. If only the rest of the clueless would follow suit.

  • > Is this your ass taking to your head, Brian?

    Oh? You DIDN'T leave as promised...well then, let's continue. I would refer to you by name, but then again you're a wuss...

    > Untrue. It's a fact; some progs will not run on > anything but RedHat.

    Name one. Programs may require that you install
    the RPM package, but no such program exists to my knowledge that will ONLY run under RedHat's distribution of Linux. Put up or shut up, asshole. I'm waiting.

    > All I am saying is that RedHat gets the glory while others get the shaft. Where is the humility?

    What does "humility" have to do with anything and who cares? Why do you bash RedHat for the oversight of others?

    > i can't remember the details, but it would be useless to show evidence to someone like you, anyway.

    Right, right...Yeah, jerks like me have the audacity to tell people like you to put your money where your mouth is and *surprise* you can't.

    > like many others here, you denigrate fsf/gnu, and you constantly twist my words.

    The only person screwing up your sentiments is you. I've used *nothing but Linux* for four years, moron, I do NOT denigrate GNU. Do you even read what I wrote or do you just spout off martyr rheotoric endlessly??

    How bout you STOP responding to me unless you can provide one iota of proof to your pointless rants?
  • > oh yeah -- you're not attacking me. I looked, I can't find it. Fuck you, Brian

    OOOOOH! That hurt. Heh. Well, I'm glad you turned to your limited vocabulary rather than backup what you were talking about with PROOF. Look a little harder if you like. Won't matter. You're wrong.

    I *know* you don't know what you're talking about...I just wanna hear you *say* it.

    Heh. Moron.
  • Amen, brother. You hit the nail on the head.

    Unfortunately, as you've seen, there are those among us who ...

    1) Don't remember all the infighting that did the unices in the first time around.

    2) Have watched too much X-Files and are looking for a new conspiracy theory to replace Microsoft since they're not gonna be as high on the list after the butt-whipping from the DoJ.

    Oh well, nothing new really. The best way you can have fun with these idiots is to ask them to back up what they're talking about. As they stare slackjawed at the terminal because they *can't*, they formulate insults because that's all they *can* say at that point.

  • > What are you talking about? There's GNU, Suse, RedHat, Mandrake, etc. Most have utilities that do > not run on the others.

    You said there is software that runs only on RedHat and nowhere else. I'm still waiting to find out what this mystery program is.

    > Many have filesystem layouts that differ. Maybe > something like the LSB could help -- oops, RedHat isn't sure they want to support that.

    That doesn't mean a program won't run on some other dist. of Linux ... one just has to *gasp* be knowledgable enough to install it. Keep trying.

    > Do you speak officially for RedHat or Metrowerks?

    And your point would be....??

    > ...if all Linuces are the same, maybe it shouldn't say "RedHAt", and have the "GNU Edition" -- which cost $99 -- ship free with RedHat products.

    A business decision. What's wrong with that? Why don't we ever hear people complaining about Caldera? They pack tons of proprietary crap in their dist. Oh, because they're never in the news.

    > I have never called RedHat evil, but I am concerned that they are having a lot of success without giving a lot of credit where credit is due. I suspect FSF/Gnu/RMS and others are being given short shrift when they made, and continue to make, real and substantial contributions to Linux.

    What would you have them do? What would be appropriate in your opinion?

    > I'm just saying that these constant "RedHat"
    announcements seem unfair, and whether or not anyone else agrees, I'm about ready to jump ship on RedHat.

    What does fairness have to do with anything? RMS could go into business tomorrow selling a Linux dist. with GNU stamped up and down all over it.
    Why doesn't he, do you think?

    > I agree with you that people can pick and use their own distro, but it seems like you think I should just shut up and go away.

    No, I simply want people like you to "give credit where credit is due". RedHat has kept the GNOME project alive and contributed to it in spades. RedHat appealed to Adaptec to release actual low-level support rather than reverse engineering.
    RedHat hasn't done anything bad yet and your original post implied as much. After much beratement, you've filtered out the extraneous and seem to be saying, "RedHat getting all this attention seems Microsoft'ish and may not credit all those involved."

    Fair enough. If that's all you're saying. I still don't compeletely agree, but at least it's a start.

    However, you shouldn't get your clit in a knot because I asked you to ante up on your other claims.

    > I never said it was wrong for them to make money. But how many people, who helped them up, are being left in the wake?

    Oh for God's sake, you can't read Slashdot/ZDnet/Wired without RMS reminding you about this...believe me, no one is being left at the wayside.

    You read what I write as some agressive punk blindly following some RedHat jihad. I've used most all of the dist's at least once. I'm not even defending RedHat. You were errant in your early criticisms and I merely called you on it.

    PS I'm not a "slasshole" and I would never DoS you
    or anyone else and am not really thrilled about being labeled as such. If I disagree with you, I'll do so with the written word. No offense, but your opinion doesn't mean enough to me to do something like that.
  • Thanks for leaving out where I proved you were full of shit and couldn't prove anything.

    Real objective, but I would expect no less from an unbiased, ANONYMOUS guy like yourself.

  • SAP runs on most commercial unix platforms, mainframes, and some obscure OS from Redmond for demo purposes.

    It's a bitch to setup, but wouldnt it be a cool replacement for Quicken under Linux? (heeh)
  • What you've missed, I would think is that the statement is almost meaningless unless you state what criteria is being used to compare them.

    Biggest by unit sales, biggest by total value of sales, biggest by profits, biggest by net assets, biggest by number of employees, biggest by square footage of premises, biggest by combined shoe sizes of employees....

  • Maybe they're looking at all the other companies who've already thrown money at RedHat. IBM is still the biggest mover and shaker when it comes to IT.
  • That's certainly an odd 'understanding' you have there. As an engineer/hacker through and through, my opinion is the opposite, and so is that of all my colleagues. Look at SAP (R/2 or R/3) from a technical standpoint (architecture, technical design, realisation) and you can't deny it's a very well engineered system-/application software.

    Perhaps as a user ("we use SAP at my work") your view is different.

    Hackers crying while using SAP? Maybe they didn't know what they were doing. Change your hackers. ;-)

    dj adams
  • Yup...many big SAP clients spend big bucks bringing them in, then spend bigger bucks sending them back out the door. Me thinks they have a better sales staff, than coders...

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