Red Hat Dismissing Microsoft, Oracle

Robert writes to tell us Red Hat's CEO Matthew Szulik is encouraging customers to take Microsoft up on their support voucher offer for Novell's rival Linux system in order to "get the issue over with." Dismissing the impact that the Microsoft-Novell deal has had on business, Szulik is just happy to see customers taking Microsoft's money. "Szulik also dismissed Oracle Corp's attempt to under-cut it on Linux support on similar grounds, insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend."

Dismissing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time Col. Klink dismissed Hogan, the fun was just about to start.

Re:

[DuckDodgers]

Microsoft dominates the IT industry, so most IT professionals are comfortable with Microsoft. You will only recommend a product you already know.

I work at a company with eight developers. I am one of two that can install, administer, and program for Linux. The other six have only ever used Windows. Our customers all run Windows in their offices. We do everything on Windows because Windows is ubiquitous, not out of any inherent virtues it has over Red Hat. It's simply cheaper to buy product licenses

Re:

[Joey Vegetables]

Microsoft dominates the desktop portion of the IT industry. It is only one of many players in the much more competitive server and middleware space, and its offerings are inferior to the competition except for two advantages. One is the ease of integration with its desktop and development tools. Second and probably more important is the large pool of people who know or think they know Microsoft technologies. The perception in many IT shops is that this pair of advantages translates into lower cost, whic

Oracle Support of Linux is a good thing

[rohar]

Having attended Oracle Openworld this year and being an Oracle DBA in a large AIX/HP/Solaris environment, I don't think the Oracle Linux support offering is negative for Red Hat or Linux in general. Oracle is attempting to get Linux buy-in from larger corporations that are traditional Unix shops with the idea that offering the same level of support for the OS as the DB on servers that are usually running databases exclusively is a reason to switch from traditional Unix.

I don't think that there will be many customers that are already running Linux and purchasing support from Red Hat switching to Oracle Linux support, but I think the Oracle support of Linux and their IP indemnification of Linux is overall good for Linux adoption in the enterprise.

Re:

[growse]

Indeed. Big companies are where the money is, and if they're not a linux shop already, they're nervous of unknown companies like Novell and Redhat coming along and selling something to replace their unix/windows/whatever boxes with.

With Oracle/Microsoft behind it, buying linux looks a bit more attractive.

Re:

[justinchudgar]

they're nervous of unknown companies like Novell

I started my career in IT installing a NetWare server in a trucking company that had previously used Wyse terminals connected to an IBM big-iron box in the early 90s. During most of the 90s I worked on Novell NetWare networks in companies like Westinghouse, Bank of America, GTE, Marriott Intl., etc. It was only when Windows 2000 came out that the customers I worked with started leaving the NetWare fold. Even now, I just finished a gig with a municipality hel

Re:

[growse]

I agree, because of past ventures such as Netware, Novell is more widely known to companies than Redhat. However, awareness of MS and Oracle blows them out of the water.

If I, as a company, have a yearly spend of £50 million with Oracle (quite feasable) I'm going to be more likely to seriously consider Redhat as a supplier if Oracle tells me that they're a good idea, because I have a relationship with and trust Oracle.

Re:

[rohar]

I too started out my IT career as a Novell CNA and we even ran Oracle 8 on Netware for a while at a small startup in 1998-99. The company I am at now replaced the Novell servers with win32 a few years ago, but the brand is well known. The Linux servers we do have are Redhat, but that is due to the Suse/Novell deal coming late in the game.

The adoption of Linux for Oracle database servers at my company has a few major obstacles, and none of them are to due with the branding or the support behind a Linux dist

Re:

[Gigaflynn]

maybe RedHat realises what the oracle meant, and can see that as there is no spoon, there is no money either

Re:Oracle Support of Linux is a good thing

[DaveAtFraud]

The other rationale that came right from an Oracle guy presenting at the local LUG was "one throat to choke." He said that customers didn't like calling Oracle support only to be told their problem was a Linux issue and then calling Red Hat and be told it was an Oracle issue. To the extent that people install RHEL only to run a Linux server, customers will probably migrate to Oracle. Oracle Linux isn't positioned as a general purpose distro but as a platform for an Oracle database (hine: don't call Oracle if you have a Samba issue).

In a similar vein, the same person said that Oracle is pushing current Windows customers to migrate to Linux. It seems Oracle's Windows support spends more time dealing with Windows issues than Oracle issues. Oracle Linux isn't a way to go after Linux distros. Larry's ultimate target is Bill.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Oracle Support of Linux is a good thing

[TheNinjaroach]

Oracle Linux isn't positioned as a general purpose distro but as a platform for an Oracle database (hine: don't call Oracle if you have a Samba issue).

My boss attended the last OpenWorld and had a much different opinion than your own. We (web developers) actually had to convince him not to change our current software stack out for their "Red Stack." It consisted of Red Hat Linux with Apache, PHP and Oracle DB but here's the real kicker: as long as we ran on Oracle's "Red Stack" they would support our custom PHP code with everything else. They are supporting more than Oracle DB - they're supporting the whole webserver stack as well as any code you write on that stack - so I would have to disagree with you on the impact of this issue.

Re:Oracle Support of Linux is bull sh*t

[ubiquitin]

Oracle is absolutely full of sh*t. I've been to LinuxWorld, I've been to OpenWorld, and I've seen their PHP talent. As someone who's supported and developed PHP for 8 years (since php3) I encourage you to maintain a strong distrust for this company's claims about their software. Ellison is not to be trusted with application software, just look at how many application stacks he's wasted. At this point, Larry is a has-been yacht salesman. The sales team at Red Hat will decimate ORCL in the next few yea

Brilliant!

[EveryNickIsTaken]

As we've seen in the past, completely ignoring your competition is the best way to deal with them.

Red Hat's new mascot = the ostrich.

Re:Brilliant!

[zappepcs]

I don't know, he might have a point.

FTFS "Szulik is encouraging customers to take Microsoft up on their support voucher offer [CC] for Novell's rival Linux system in order to "get the issue over with.""

If people do say 'hey, I want support now please' it will end any question about whether RedHat has something to worry about. I'm leaning toward the thought that the results of asking MS for Linux support will turn up on viral news sites all over the place with hilarious results. Can you remember the Verizon Math? or any number of other customer support nightmares that got published on the Internet?

Re:

[Builder]

Maybe I should put some of the transcripts from my RH support coversations up... While not quite in the same class as Verizon Math, they're not far off. Microsoft support is actually quite good compared to RH.

Having said that, but the time I call RH for support, I've exhausted all other avenues. With Microsoft, because I don't use it as much and my knowledge isn't as good, I call earlier, so the questions are easier. But their overall professionalism and response tends to beat RH.

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[Canth7]

As we've seen in the past, completely ignoring your competition is the best way to deal with them.

Red Hat's new mascot = the ostrich.

Why not? Ignoring the competition has worked wonders for Novell.

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[billycongo]

I'm not so sure it's ignorance. This is perhaps the most arrogant company I have ever dealt with in my life. Most of the other companies out there who have competition don't treat it mildly. I'm not sure where the arrogance comes from, but they're just sitting in RedHat HQ with smirks on their faces. When we threated to move to SuSE they said, "Good luck reading the German manuals." When we let them come back and pitch their product again, they made no concessions on price, and said, "We'll still be her

Irony

[avdp]

insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend

It's sort of ironic that this has been Microsoft's argument again Linux all along. It all comes down to "Total Cost of Ownership" and which vendor's completely made up numbers are more believable (and which "research" firm they've "sponsored").

Oracle, pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

When Oracle announced that they were going to rebrand and sell Red Hat, most people that posted comments on this site were up in arms over this. Anyone that does business with Oracle would have known how insignificant the announcement was. Dealing with Oracle sucks. I can phone three different sales reps and get three wildly different prices for the exact same configuration. Sometimes the pricing depends on how their products are going to be used, sometimes not. Without getting into more specifics, I can think of no other word for their sales department, other than 'greasy'. The only reason we still buy some products from Oracle is because we have to.

For all their warts, doing business with Red Hat is a dream compared to Oracle.

Oracle, pah!

[Macka]

Re-brand and sell Red Hat? Don't think so. Sell support for Redhat, yes. That's not the same as re-branding it.

The big problem with Oracle selling support for Redhat is this. If a customer discovers a bug in Redhat that requires a code fix and reports it to Oracle, who gets to fix it, Redhat or Oracle? "Oracle" I hear you say, because they have access to the source code.

That's all well and good, but what guarantees do you have as an Oracle customer that Oracle's fix is going to be included in Redhat's

Re:

[Macka]

There is also the question of whether Oracle would be allowed legally to just compile their patched versions of Redhat's source RPMs and offer them up over the internet to external customers. I think they would have to strip out all mention of Redhat from the source to prevent copyright infringement the same way that CentOS does.

I wonder if there are any Oracle linux customers out there who could chip in on this conversation and tell us what Oracle are really up to.

Great title

[fishthegeek]

Am I the only one that, upon reading the title, thought about how difficult a decision it must have been to fire both Microsoft and Oracle at the same time?

Re:

[alexjohnc3]

What's that you say? Szulik set Microsoft headquarters on fire?

Read all about it...

[Daishiman]

Company dismisses competitors. News at 11.

My distro...

[Bullfish]

Is bigger than your distro... Frankly, while I can understand why the people who run one distro want to show that they are better than the other distros... it is one of the things that holds linux back a bit. You get the diversity of development that comes from the different groups producing distros, but to the public who might want to try linux, it gets very confusing to sort between them if they are not technical. I mean you look at ubuntu's "linux for human beings" which implies that the other distros are not for them... And before anyone mentions that vista has six versions, they are all from MS, clearly enough delineated with a dot chart, and there are sales people there ready to steer you to the most expensive version. It would be at some level in linux's interest to have the distros look at some kind of mutual marketing strategy to help people sort out the differences between them so they can pick the one right for them, at least on the desktop side. The server people for the most part are learned enough to figure it out.

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[just_another_sean]

It would be at some level in linux's interest to have the distros look at some kind of mutual marketing strategy to help people sort out

First off, I agree with you 100% about Linux adoption being dependent on clear choices and direction for users that don't have the skills to decide for themselves.

That said, in whose best interest is it? As an example, I'm a Debian guy now, use it for almost everything. But if I decide I want to start a business tomorrow selling PC's with Linux the first thing I'm going to

Re:

[petrus4]

You get the diversity of development that comes from the different groups producing distros, but to the public who might want to try linux, it gets very confusing to sort between them if they are not technical.

Some of us realise that ultimately, we are the only people who are likely to have our best interests at heart. Steve Ballmer would not consider my life or my wellbeing to be worth a blade of grass, most likely...and so he isn't a good person to entrust my wellbeing to as far as using a computer is co

Calling Microsoft for Linux Support

[oni]

I just know how this is going to turn out:

*ring* *ring*
Customer: Hi, I'm having a problem getting apache to start automatically when my server boots.
Tech Support: Oh, apache can't do that. You should switch to IIS. It will start automatically.

Novell Victorious

[nikanth]

This deal has clearly made Novell the victor, as many big corporates are going for Suse.

Microsoft Response to Zsulik's Comments

[AlexGr]

Interesting response reported by Todd Bishop, Seattle PI: In response to Red Hat CEO, Matthew Szulik's comments dismissing the impact of the Microsoft-Novell deal on Red Hat, Microsoft director of corporate communications, Jeff O'Mara, told Todd Bishop/Seattle-PI that many customers are leaving Red Hat and looking for a Microsoft-Novell solution for a variety of reasons. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archi ves/111803.asp [nwsource.com]