Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 08 September 2009 08:40
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 6
iTWire: How would you define large?
CZ: If we are talking about the netbook deployments by governments we are talking about tens of thousands of computers and the projects would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I would define large as anything more than a few million dollars; even more than half a million is tricky for open source companies to bid for unless it's in a realm of the industry which is likely to have success with an open source solution when bidding - contact management systems, possibly some enterprise resource planning systems, some document management systems. Areas where government has shown a track record of acquiring open source technology to make it likely that open source companies would think, 'I'll have a shot at winning this business, therefore I'll spend the $30,000 to put in the bid'."
But for something like the laptops and netbooks for education, most open source companies, the local ones, would say, 'it's too big for me, I can't bid'. And the major players who have an opportunity - and there aren't many of them, there's probably realistically only one - if they don't bid, nobody else would.
iTWire: Which is this one?
CZ: The only player in the country who could bid for the netbooks contract would be Novell. And if they're not bidding, nobody else will. IBM moved out of the desktop market, the client market, some years back when they sold their desktop business to Lenovo, Red Hat does not focus on the desktop - certainly not in this country, it does in the Asian subcontinent and in parts of Europe - and Sun is not interested, they are not doing anything at all that's different because they are now in the pipeline towards being consumed by Oracle. That doesn't leave anybody else. I think Novell has spent some effort and money in trying to move into the Linux desktop business within government in Australia and it's only had modest success at best. From Novell's perspective, to put a lot of energy and money into bidding for something if they are unlikely to win doesn't make sense.
iTWire: In the current situation, Novell would not bid against Microsoft.
CZ: Not necessarily. There's no reason why they wouldn't.
iTWire: They're in bed with Microsoft, why would they bid against them?
CZ: It doesn't currently stop them from selling client and server solutions that compete with Microsoft's core product. They're not necessarily in bed with Microsoft but they have got a different strategic position. They saw that was an advantage play from their perspective, whether it is or not may bear fruit in the short term and may or may not in the long term, i don't know. But that wouldn't stop them from bidding. I don't think they would pull the reins on the bidding horse because of the strategic deal they have with Microsoft.
iTWire: Novell has hitched its horse to the interoperability factor. A lot of the interoperability possibilities come from Microsoft. Why would they want to rub Microsoft the wrong way?
CZ: That might be a factor. There may be strategic reasons. My guess is they wouldn't even need that as a reason not to bid. I don't believe they've had substantial success in the Australian public sector to justify enough of a confidence level to say that they'd put in the resources to bid.
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