Novell Missteps Not Affecting SuSE 96
OSS_ilation writes "Analysts and users agree -- if the layoff rumors at Novell prove true sometime soon, SuSE Linux has nothing to fear. Over at SearchOpenSource.com the word is that the popular SuSE Linux operating system has both the community support and technical chops to weather any personnel-related storms that may be lingering on the horizon. However, the point is also made that should Novell go south, there are those who believe SuSE could prove to be an appealing acquisition target."
1992 Called... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Storm of SuSe news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Storm of SuSe news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Storm of SuSe news (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Storm of SuSe news (Score:1)
Re:Storm of SuSe news (Score:1)
If Novell does sell Suse... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:If Novell does sell Suse... (Score:2)
What if someone like MS were to buy them? What if someone even more incompetant were to buy them (SCO? Though i don't know where they'd get the money. SCO and Novell have close ties though). What if someone that didn't really care about Linux bought them?
Re:If Novell does sell Suse... (Score:2)
Re:If Novell does sell Suse... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a matter of who owns the distro, it's a matter of what money is being invested in it.
Re:If Novell does sell Suse... (Score:2)
I just can't believe... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I just can't believe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I just can't believe... (Score:1, Flamebait)
This is slashdot where group think is convinced massively wealthy, divested and well run corporations are constantly on the brink of extinction.
Yes, I would agree that a "divested" company is likely in trouble. However, I do not see how that applies to Novell. Please explain.
Re:I just can't believe... (Score:4, Informative)
Novell's management is one of the most disfunctional units in any major corporation, its great that they bought SuSE and all, except that they haven't done anything with the product since they've bought it. Sure they hired Nat, and he's done some cool things, but when it comes down to it, Novell is still testing the waters with Linux and right now its not looking too good for them. Don't be surprised if they sell off that unit. Last quarter they only earned 2 million dollars, and now they are spending 200 million to buyback stock and bump up their stock prices so investors are a little happier.
Investors have also already pushed Novell to sell off its consulting unit. Now they are also laying off at a minimum of 120 people in Europe. Most investment firms predict Novell will continue to underperform for sometime. Novell bought SuSE because it was on the market to be purchased and it was fairly cheap, Red Hat was offered the chance to buy SuSE first but they declined. Red Hat, unlike Novell, is riddled with major OSS advocates from the top down (i.e. the guy who wrote the first gnu c++ compiler is their VP of OSS affairs) and they believe in healthy competition, especially since with OSS everyone benefits from eachother's work, also it would have made them look bad as being a monopoly on the market. Novell saw a cheap way to test if Linux was profitable and its turning out to not be the golden goose that they needed. Novell is literally just a big mess and its been that way for over half a decade. They *can't* keep at this pace for another year or two.
Regards,
Steve
Novell won't sell Suse. Not a chance. (Score:3, Insightful)
Them getting into linux is about the ONLY thing that people ever liked about Novell in the past 5 years or so. That's it. The top management fighting with each other on actually who gets the 'credit' for pushing the movement to open source operating systems.
That's it. It would be shit-ass suicide for them to sell of their linux systems.
The last of the loyal following is starting to drift off of Netware. Linux is the 2nd most popular operating system in the world a
Re:Novell won't sell Suse. Not a chance. (Score:2)
I agree with the parent poster. If Novell was to sell off SuSE then they have just killed themselves. But lets take a serious look at the amount of dollars that it takes to run SuSE vs say groupwise. Groupwise requires a ton more developers and support professionals than SuSE. SuSE at it's core is nothing much more that YAST and some great testing of other peoples software. (yes I am over stateing the facts a bit,
Re:Novell won't sell Suse. Not a chance. (Score:1, Insightful)
SUSE is critical, if you are under the assumption that Novell can afford to wait out the transition from Netware to Linux. Unfortunately that assumption is wrong. Novell is swirling in the shitter and needs to fix things in one or two years -- they can't afford to wait for Linux to come around in their traditional enterprise lan-network markets.
(That's why they have resorted to p
Re:I just can't believe... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong.
Novell has bet their farm with SuSe being successful. Don't fool yourself. Novell may be mismanaged, but they do still have a huge install base running NetWare. And they've been gradually trying do get their existing NetWare customers to switch to Suse Enterprise. Virtually their entire product offering: E-directory, Identity Manager, ZenWorks, GroupWise, etc. have been po
Novell still has cash (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Novell still has cash (Score:2)
Yeah, and I hear they've got a surefire business plan. They're going to sell IBM for not buying Unix licenses! They've even hired some guy named Sterile McBride as a consultant, though rumor has it he may have to go on vacation for a while.
Re:Novell still has cash (Score:1)
Re:Novell still has cash (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at who the majority stakeholder in SuSE Linux is though (*cough*IBM*cough*), and it should be clear that SuSE doesn't have a lot to worry about.
Redhat might.
Then again, judging by how poorly IBM execs understand the underpinnings of the F/OSS movement, IBM might just bury SuSE. It's not like they don't know how to bury
Re:Novell still has cash (Score:1)
Regards,
Steve
Nice (Score:4, Funny)
NoveGPL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:3, Interesting)
That purchase is still kind of a mystery to me, since they've not really leveraged the products much. It's good they're giving the Ximian guys a salary, but what's it doing for Novell?
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NoveGPL (Score:2)
SuSE could be nice, but Ximian products rocks in desktop world. They got Evolution, Mono (I *don't* know perfectly nor Java, nor Mono, nor legal background of this, but simply saying that Mono is mistep is actually pure zealotry and afraid-anything-connected-with-Microsoft atitude), and lot of expierence in desktop field. Calling them worth nothing would be like calling GNOME worth nothing, but
Yes, Novell have plenty of cash in the bank (Score:4, Interesting)
It takes real genius to fail to meet the market in the way Novell has, but Novell has so many failed strategies, failed relaunches, failed products that never quite delivered, that it amounts to a sort of genius.
It has too many consultants, but more importantly far too many managerial layers to ever be nimble. Novell corporately is sclerotic, and its upper management is utterly remote from the cutting edge.
SuSE wasn't making money before the acquisition, and SuSE Linux needs more corporate sponsors.
Perhaps Google should buy SuSE Linux - I'm sure Eric Schmidt would like the irony.
Re:Yes, Novell have plenty of cash in the bank (Score:2)
They were making money, and even making comfortable money, they are still one of the few departments of Novell making money.
Re:Yes, Novell have plenty of cash in the bank (Score:1)
All about the shareholders (Score:2, Insightful)
Novell still ha a very good marketshare... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, and more importantly, those clients are used to pay. So, the SuSe offering of novell, with the tools used by novell admins, is cheaper, then they will maintain, and grouth their market share.
Also, Microsof pricing as a Network Operating System, is way more expensive than Novell offerings, and for example, a iDirectory with Identity Manager, are good solutions, and their OpenSource counterpart, needs a LOT of time to implement it correctly, lot of hack and slash, and Novell provides clients from windows/linux/mac...
So, big & medium size co, searching for a cheaper infrastructure, and wanting to still have somebody to sue, and have WorldWide support, then Novell SuSe is the way to go...
Re:Novell still ha a very good marketshare... (Score:2)
Recent SUSE Convert (Score:1)
Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:3, Insightful)
Suse is unimportant. It's yet another linux distro, one among many, and it isn't even that different. If Suse disappeared, its users could just switch to another distro.
Mono, however, is vastly cooler and far more important than Suse, for two reasons. First, there is no open source alternative to Mono--they're actually writing something new instead of just putting together yet another distro. Second, consider Mono's impact--Mono is an implementation of the .NET CLR and C# compilers that will allow future applications written for the Microsoft platform to run seamlessly on Linux (!!). It would be difficult to overstate how important that is. Mono is a major contribution.
Novell funds both Suse and Mono. But only Mono matters. If Novell has problems (and I'm not sure they even are having problems), it shouldn't be Suse that concerns us.
Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:2)
Hobbyist users, maybe. The point of Novell backing Suse is that they provide enterprise support for the distro and they are in a position to respond to their customers as to what should go into that distro. For example, they put more effort into hardware support than some other distros do. For a large company running mission-critical oper
Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:3, Informative)
Today the VM, C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, System.XML and the core from
Mono don't matter (Score:2)
Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:2, Interesting)
theres a crapload of c# compilers out there.
Gnu's portable dot net had a working windows.forms library way before mono did.
http://www.dotgnu.org/ [dotgnu.org]
Re:Who cares about Suse? It's Mono that matters... (Score:1)
Mono is ho-hum. Hula really matters. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hula (another Novell incubator project) is innovative. Hula implements integrated open standards based calendaring, scheduling, email etc. Hula doesn't copy MS API's; Hula, should it succeed, could overshadow Exchange in the collaboration software arena. To date, Exchange has had no real competition. But imagine what standards based collaboration would mean. It would be analogous to HTTP/HTML on the web, or SMTP/IMAP for email. Exchange lets you collaborate with other people in using the same Exchange server. Open standards for collaboration could allow you keep in sync with stuff going on all over the damn place. Keep in sync with your family, friends, work, community, business relationships, your kid's school, whatever. Think about it.
Bury Exchange. Long live (the bright lights at) Novell.
Re:Mono is ho-hum. Hula really matters. (Score:1)
May I ask how this is different from the open standards of iCal? I'm sure this isn't simply a case of "so many standards to choose from", so I'd be interested to hear more. I'd truly like to see an open alternative to Exchange & Outlook, but I suspect that success depends on many factors, with technical qualities being only one item on the list.
Re:Mono is ho-hum. Hula really matters. (Score:1)
False. http://mono-project.com/ECMA [mono-project.com]
Feel free to rant and rave about open standards (I love'em too:) but in this case you're pissing into the wind. C# and the CLR are slick as, so what they're M$ designed, the main C# man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg [wikipedia.org]) knows his stuff.
It's funny... (Score:1)
Not that I would dare to ever disagree.
*Quickly looks around hoping no-one read this unpopular statement*
Good To hear (Score:1)
they've been deassimilated.
Analysts talking junk again (Score:5, Insightful)
That wouldn't be attractive for many companies. I mean, why change from Windows to Linux when the only credible Linux game in town is Red Hat and they want to be just like Microsoft anyway. This sounds much more like analysts talking up SUSE because they know full well that if it comes to a showdown at Novell, the Linux part is the one that will sell for decent money, if they can keep it untarnished.
I'd have to agree with the analysts (Score:1)
For Novell it's either Linux or bust. There is no alternative that they can go after. This is it. It's the end game.
And I damn well hope that they make enough money to be solvent...
open source Mono...
open source Yast...
open source Novell Netmail.. (Hula)
Developers working on X.org. Developers working on Gnome desktop. (they completely turned around Evolution email client to a nice outlook ki
Now who might want to see Novell disembowelled? (Score:4, Informative)
A revitalized Novell-SUSE-Ximian combo is a massive threat to Microsoft (Hello New Zealand!) and if there are any even barely semilegal (under the current US regi... administration) wink-wink-nod-nod ways of getting the large financial firms to undermine Novell's image and finances, the goebbelsesque masterminds within the Strategic Acquisitions and Finances department of Microsoft are certainly pulling all their strings to that effect. That's their sole reason d'etre!
One recent example: When MS wanted their "Linux Powerhouse" and Office competitors Corel dead (but actually managed to buy it instead through a proxy; DOJ who?), they used ex-MS executives and their former or current colleagues and an MS-affiliated Vector Capital venture firm (financed by certain Paul Allen and operated by ex-MS execs) to do the probing, buying, insider bribing (offers of a glittery parachutes and a get-out-of-jail-free cards, anyone?), doctored "third party" evaluation of the company finances and its business projections (by top Wall St firms) etc. Even Corel's new and supposedly independently created pro-MS business strategy in 2001 was devised by a consultancy firm (McKinsey and Company) with links to people involved in the shady takeover.
Innocuous manipulation of competitors' share price (Down, boy!), or interference in competitors' corporate affairs through seemingly neutral investment houses or venture investors (Split 'em up for quick short-term profit!) is probably taking place all the time. The corporate hijacking of Corel was an amazingly outrageous maneuver, taking place as it did so soon after MS had nominally "lost" their monopoly case against the US-DOJ, and Microsoft's strategic planners certainly feel that they have even more leeway these days.
"Should Novell go south... blah blah blah?"
At the time of the MS-engineered takeover Corel was finalizing its turnaround and had loads of cash left (they were eventually bought out for a mere $30-40M for the dozen or so products!) but for some reason the larger investment firms and certain media kept referring to the company as "beleagured" (Hello Apple!), keeping up a constant stream of negative speculation. That is, of course, intended to have an effect on potential customers...
So now we have the even cash-richer Novell in the unenviable position of being a major MS competitor and yet having its "missteps" and future disembowellings spculated in the press.. But this time Novell also has some big backers (Hello Big Blue!) in its corner and I'd expect Novell to break through any glass ceilings or FUD campaigns instead of laying down its arms and capitulating before the Barbarian Gates.
Somebody is looking to get flamed... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't take much research to discover that Novell grew their business in the early 90s to the mid 90s from less then $500 million to over $2 billion. And when they hit their peak in the mid 90s they had over 7000 employees. In the late 90s Novell's business was cut in half to about $1 billion and they have held there for some time. Currently the number of employees is at 6000+ and their costs to run their business just about overwhelm their revenue. Which begs the question, does this billion dollar company have more people than are necessary to run the business? I know what the numbers say, but I'll let everyone figure it out for themselves.
The point to keep from all this, while Novell has not done a good of keeping costs under control they have done a good job of keeping their revenues up since Microsoft sucked away soo much of their business. So it is not likely Novell will be folding anytime soon and if anything they will become a leaner and more profitable company which currently has an excellent business plan point directly at the burgeoning open source market.
burnin
Zenworks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zenworks (Score:3, Interesting)
PROS:
you can use most (there are a few exceptions for licensing reasons but most stuff is either free, site licesed, or licensed on a concurrent user basis using licenseing servers) of your departmental applications anywhere on campus
software can be added reasonablly quickly
the same image can be used throughout the whole university i
Stable OS != Stable company (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stable OS != Stable company (Score:1)
Re:Stable OS != Stable company (Score:2)
It's all in the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Good Article (Score:3, Informative)
see what can happen (Score:1)
Hello - DOJ are you watching?
SuSE Is pretty good (Score:1)