Novell bid to cannibalise Linux market

Sam Varghese
Friday, 14 November 2008 04:13

Opinion and Analysis

Novell is getting increasingly desperate for sales. One can come to no other conclusion on reading the latest offer from the company which once dominated the world of PC networking.


In short, it is going to try and cannibalise the tiny GNU/Linux market - try and pull customers using Red Hat and CentOS over to using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Good luck, gentlemen, you're going to need it. I could send a rabbit's foot over as well, if you like.

CentOS is a distribution which can best be described as "Red Hat minus the trademarks."

In effect, this itself shows a weakness in Novell's sales strategy - the company cannot, on its own, identify likely GNU/Linux users. It cannot convince people to switch. Red Hat has to do the hard work and then Novell tries to sneak its way in.

Novell is offering a three-year subscription to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for users who switch - and two years of support to assist in making the switch. Something like the deal I get from my local baker - a loaf plus six buns for a little more than the cost of the loaf. The difference is the buns are palatable.

Wonderful strategy - assuming that there are lots of companies lining up for what, in my opinion, is a waste of time.

Novell has had a disadvantage right from the start in the Linux market - it is not an organic open source company. And there isn't that much of a market either.

It entered the scene by buying SUSE Linux in 2003, having earlier picked up Ximian, a maker of business desktop software for Linux. Ximian's other product, Mono, a project that has recreated portions of Microsoft's .Net programming environment as an open source effort, also became part of Novell.

Initially, Novell made some bold strides and it looked like the company was going to be a worthwhile addition to the open source landscape. It even put out its own branded Linux distribution.

But around this time, Chris Stone, the man who second in command, resigned. Stone was an aggressive open source advocate and a lot of Novell's Linux marketing strategy was seen as being masterminded by him. His departure took a lot of the wind out of Novell's sails.