One thing is for sure – this is going to be a roller coaster ride for Novell execs and employees. Novell actually has a lot of cash relative to its revenues so it was only a matter of time before someone would go raiding. Elliott is in it for a flip profit … and the financials are lined up perfectly. (or someone behind Elliot who is in it for other reasons ;-) This is a savvy move, but also as Andy says a potentially dangerous game – if they win and overpaid.

If you’re reading any analysis of the situation, make sure you read Andy’s take in the link below. At the end of the day, the GPL, Suse, the technology, etc won’t matter – this is going to be a nasty game billion dollar chicken game for profits.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20100304051547830

I haven’t seen any article yet, though,  that describes in detail how the high stakes game of tender offers is played, and how the usual process maps (and doesn’t) to a high tech company like Novell.  So I thought I’d provide an overview for those that haven’t had occasion to follow a tender offer in the past, and also my thoughts on what may happen over the next several months in this particular game of cat and mouse.

Between September and August, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.26 percentage points (from 66.97 percent to 65.71 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.77 percentage points (from 22.98 percent to 23.75 percent). Safari increased 0.17 percentage points (from 4.07 percent to 4.24 percent) while Chrome once again moved further away from Opera: it gained a worthy 0.33 percentage points (from 2.84 percent to 3.17 percent).

• Consider: 1 license for Vista Home Basic $199 at Best Buy
• Consider: 1 Dell Mini 9 Netbook with Vista Home Basic for just $299
• Consider: 1 Dell Mini 9 Netbook with Ubuntu for just $249

So, for $199 you can get a software license for Microsoft. For just $100 more, you can get a working netbook with that software license. Or, for just $50 more, you can get that same Netbook with Linux.

If you had just $300 to spend, who wants to pick the software license?

Now, consider what this is doing to Microsoft’s margins… Your premium pricing power has just been put under pressure – not by Linux, but by the hardware underneath the OS that just dropped from days of $1,000 laptops to $299. Microsoft can’t justify doubling the price of the product just for its software license.  And Ubuntu is clearly offering hardware vendors a key counterpoint in their negotiations with Microsoft.

Microsoft is also in a bind as enforcing its premium pricing will either

1. invite priracy b/c who can look at the offerings and justify paying that much retail for the OS, and which hurts their margins more (a paying customer is better than a pirating one…)
2. 2) alienate a new set of younger, price conscious buyers entering the market (not just in the US, but around the world)

Clearly Microsoft is in need of a strategy refresh – and fast. I see the tide turning where their downstream users and upstream suppliers will create a challenging negotiation. Michael Porter would have fun with this analysis.

And with that… I may just order myself a Netbook soon. They’re almost as cheap as iPods now…

TomTom has belatedly joined a patent holding company, which champions the Linux ecosystem, in a clear message that the GPS maker won’t take its escalating legal with Microsoft lying down.

…

The group, which has some big backers in the open source community, including IBM, Novell and Red Hat, was founded with the sole aim of acquiring patents relating to Linux and offering them royalty-free to Linux developers.

…

“I’d say the Microsoft/TomTom battle just got bigger, and TomTom is in a stronger position than it was”, wrote Groklaw today in response to the OIN announcement.

What’s also interesting is that so far, Red Hat has only submitted for Windows certification on KVM and not yest on RHEL/Xen (which is currently shipping).

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=lcUS21686409

The Red Hat and Microsoft agreement simply is about cross-validation/certification and does not have any IP or financial implications.

 

Regardless, I found a new, interesting feature playing around with the Windows 7 beta. First, fire up the msconfig app

Now in the Boot tab, you will see options for “No GUI boot” and “OS boot information”. If you check both of these options, you can see Windows starting up similar to what you’d expect in a classic Linux boot. Now I’ll warn you – this can take a long time. I’m not sure why, but it took forever when I did this. I would think it’s no different from a booting perspective, but it’s not…

Adobe, yes Adobe, is now proposing an open platform (built on a mobile version of Air) that would run applications from any carrier’s platform (albeit all those, closed). Now I’m intrigued. Will we finally see a shift from closed, single carrier channels to open if carriers adopt this strategy? And will Adobe of all companies actually lead the way?

Note, this does not mean the applications themselves or the governance of the channels by the carriers would be open, but at least the platform they run applications on could be. This would be a major change in an industry thus far plagued by closed, private and a thousand “one-off” generation implementations. Heck, even Linux mobile adoptions have been “one offs”.

I suspect the challenge here will come in testing these applications across an amazing number of devices and revisions, but if Adobe can replicate its strong Flash success on mobile platforms, perhaps we won’t be stuck in a Silverlight world ;-)

Meanwhile, Adobe is set to follow rival Apple into the mobile apps game, but is seeking to provide a common platform that will be supported across stores from many operators and vendors, rather than creating its own portal. The Flash maker, whose dominance of mobile video streaming is dented by Apple’s refusal to support the technology on the iPhone, will launch a mobile version of its Air product next year.

This will allow the same application to run across many cellphones, unlike its current mobile product, Flash Lite, which varies in implementation between different platforms. Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s CTO, said at Web 2.0: “Of all the technologies on mobile phones, none of them has more than a 50 per cent reach. As a developer, you have to implement your content about 400 times right now. That is a complete mess.”

Another point of interest is Adobe’s royalty free proposal. Adobe … will incent implementers to redistribute their implementations back? Adobe has seriously evolved its attitude… for the better.

For companies that agree to keep their implementations of Air open, so apps can be used from any online site, not just designated store, Adobe will eliminate royalties.

Within the first two weeks, both had their laptops infected by viruses separately – different viruses, different times. One was running XP, the other Vista on you basic Dell laptops. Of course, who did they call? Answer: me.

Well, I took in both laptops and tried to fix them. I found that viruses today are far more advanced – one modified the MBR and the other completely wiped out the Dell recovery partition – savvy indeed. I did my best to try re-installing their respective Windows OSs, but I found that Microsoft’s licensing practices prevented me from succeeding. First, I only had Pro CDs of XP and Vista so the Home license keys on the underside of each laptop were of no use. I’d install the OS, then Microsoft Genuine Advantage would block me… thanks Microsoft.

So I had them try calling Dell – of course, no luck. They wouldn’t send a replacement media for Windows. If I had the time and energy, I’d file a lawsuit against them tomorrow.

So I turned to my laptop OS of choice: Ubuntu. No chance for a license key or media obtainment problem.

My sisters had both seen me using Ubuntu before so they had seen “what it looked like” but they never knew it wasn’t Windows. When I loaded it on their laptops, they actually didn’t know it wasn’t Windows. In fact, the first thing they both did was try downloading/installing iTunes from Apple.com. No luck – Apple, where’s an Ubuntu client?

So I set them up with all the software they needed for iPods. They actually installed their own printers without even calling me (HP printers – great compatibility). They use OpenOffice for their papers/spreadsheets/presentations, Firefox was not new to them, and Evolution is just as easy as Outlook.

They’re now both about to close out their first semester – both made it on Ubuntu alone. And the best news – not a single virus.

More amazingly, the overall number of “support requests” have gone down. Even when they had Windows there were other reasons for calls, but now… only an occassional “how do I?” type question here or there. It’s been great. They easily download from the digital cameras, they manage their music collections (no corrupted iTunes libraries), and they use all the latest social media networks. Now they would both prefer to get a Mac, but that’s the really interesting part – they have no need for Windows.

We’re making progress. Ubuntu is leading the way.

http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574CE00371FE1.html

I’m not sure UNIX in general is dead as AIX and I think even HP-UX have seen fairly strong growth recently, but Linux is certainly tearing up the industry like the good disruptor it is. I think another angle that was missed is the outstanding growth of Linux on Power and mainframe platforms – heck, even Sun has tried to put Solaris on an IBM mainframe.

Another point that is often overlooked is that a lot of Solaris migrations also go to Windows. It’s the drive to high volume platforms that triggers the shift.

However, aside from those minor conflicts in views, Jim Zemlin is right on. I think this quote says it all. It amazes me that any company would try to compete with that level of momentum head on and not try to join in on the growth opportunity. Just look at Red Hat’s earnings yesterday if you’re still skeptical.

By contrast, Linux is the overwhelming choice for new deployments on x86 systems, Zemlin says.  Sun has had its strength in applications such as ERP systems with a seven- to 20-year life cycle, he adds. “What’s starting to happen is those life cycles are starting to be completed,” and those customers are moving to Linux.

That move to Linux is accelerated by Linux’s strength in Web applications, where developers today are focused, Zemlin adds. “You can’t really talk to any Web-based application company these days that’s not using Linux,” he says.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/08/lse_down/

But at 9am trading was suspended as big banks lost their connection to the exchange. Some traders blamed an overloaded system following the US government decision.

I wonder if the issue has to do with their choice of Windows Server over Linux? Of course you never really do see the implications of that choice on Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” or “Compare” websites now do you… :-)

http://www.idgconnect.com/software/windows/london_stock_exchange_achieving_record_reliability_using_windows_over_linux/

The London Stock Exchange needed a scalable, reliable, high-performance stock exchange ticker plant to win more trading business and new customers and replace its earlier system. Roughly 40 per cent of the Exchange’s revenues are generated by the sale of real-time information about stock prices.

You can see the “story” behind Chrome’s purpose on Google’s website at the URL below. Google put its argument for Chrome and its approach in comic format which I found quite entertaining. For engineers out there, this is a great medium (in my opinion) for communicating the benefit/value of an architecture decision. The technology and impact on the users are clearly defined.

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

I’m actually quite excited to see Chrome in action. First, there’s been a lot of work going on with Javascript engines and I’m sure Google did some performance work that should help Google Maps, Gmail, etc. Second, there appears to be a very strong integration of Google Gears into Chrome which should lend to great offline performance and features. Finally, it also looks like Google is going to revolutionize the “behind the scenes” processing your browser does. Instead of implementing a single threaded web processing model as we’re all used to, Google is going to split each tab into its own process. This gives you a multitasking performance boost if you’re a big time power user with multiple tabs executing at the same time. More important though should be the isolation – if Google Maps crashes, it shouldn’t take out the entire browser.

Google Inc. is releasing its own Web browser in a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer and ensuring easy access to its market-leading search engine.

The Mountain View-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser’s arrival.

The free browser, called “Chrome,” is supposed to be available for downloading Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Google said it’s still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.’s Mac computer and the Linux operating system.

Now, yet another question is why do we need another web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux? How about one that supports open standards for the iPhone? Unfortunately Apple is unlikely to budge on its Apps policies which will, I can guarantee, limit its enterprise adoption for the iPhone. I’m honestly shocked that Apple has been touting its “enterprise” potential in some circles and been so standoffish towards enterprise applications vendors who those “enterprise” clients would need. Wake up Apple. You need Symantec, Cisco, AT&T and other network/AV/etc providers. Not everyone uses Microsoft Exchange so you’ll need Lotus Notes, IMAP support, etc. Oh well, I can only hope Apple will one day “get it”.

http://saviorodrigues.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/are-vendors-afraid-of-open-source/

Let’s start with page 12, “Item 1A: Risk Factors”, first risk section:

Challenges to our business model may reduce our revenues and operating margins. Our business model has been based upon customers paying a fee to license software that we develop and distribute. Under this license-based software model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from the distribution of their products. Certain “open source” software business models challenge our license-based software model. Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license. A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.

No where in this section covering “open source” software does Microsoft hint at or acknowledge the possibility that Microsoft could leverage this model to strengthen its developer community, offer attractive licensing into emerging markets, leverage community based development to lead in web server standards, etc.

This is more interesting, because the entire section lacks anything that Microsoft may do to counter, compete with, or embrace the risk it identified: open source software.

Now take a look at the other paragraphs in this section 1A Risk Factors of the annual report. ALL of the other items called out as significant risks have something at the end of their paragaphs – what Microsoft will do about them. For instance:

Advertising Subscription Business Models: “We are devoting significant resources toward developing our own competing software plus services strategies. It is uncertain whether these strategies will be successful.”

Platform based ecosystems (vertically integrated model): “We also offer vertically-integrated hardware and software products;…”

Piracy: “Throughout the world, we actively educate consumers about the benefits of licensing genuine products and obtaining indemnification benefits for intellectual property risks, and we educate lawmakers about the advantages of a business climate where intellectual property rights are protected.”

And it goes on and on… but where is this wonderfully open painting of Microsoft collaborating with the open source community? Will Microsoft ever embrace it enough to have a chance of extending it?

To be continued…

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/11/microsoft_windows_server_2008/

An amazing story of the value the Linux community development process brings to the table in solving user problems. Now that Microsoft knows there’s a problem, their engineers have to spend months identfying where there’s a problem, months identifying who will have to fix the problem and how, and months fixing the issue. Then the issue(s) may have to wait until the next Windows release, or do they roll out in an update.

Either way, the community developing Linux saw the pain point right away a long time ago and built in “green” features that today show up in the stable RHEL kernel. This is just another example of when community based development can outperform because of the open contact with user communities.

For this test, we examined power consumption as a way to judge whether Windows Server 2008 or Linux is, in fact, the ‘greener’ operating system. As the price of power hits record heights, power reduction mechanisms shipping within an operating system should play a key role in you energy conservation plan.

…

The results showed that while Windows Server 2008 drew slightly less power in a few test cases when it had its maximum power saving settings turned on, it was RHEL that did the best job of keeping the power draw in check across the board.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/05/smartphone_os_linux/

Smartphones running Linux look set to become far more commonplace within the next five years, market watcher ABI Research has forecast.

The firm’s VP, Stuart Carlaw, reckons that Linux will feature on 23 per cent of smartphones by 2013. He added that that share of the market will put the open source operating system in second place in the smartphone popularity stakes, putting it behind Symbian and ahead of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile worldwide.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/02/project_watch_eight/

Where was the horror typically associated with migration, where was the pain? I was expecting – not to say looking forward – to writing about the hair-tearing frustrations and incandescent rages attendant upon working with Microsoft’s community technology previews (CTPs) and early releases of new software. But it was not to be.

Apart from the software installation the project has been pretty much drama-free: the operating system hasn’t crashed, the database hasn’t crashed, stuff just works. As a developer, I am delighted the project has gone so well.

Since most Office users would be happy to continue using Microsoft’s old binary formats, and since those for whom open standards are important would probably prefer ODF or PDF formats anyhow, I won’t be surprised if OOXML quietly dies before that future Office iteration ever sees the light of day.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/ramji_microsoft_open_source_strategy/