Archive for the 'Novell' Category
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
InfoWorld: Windows loses ground with North America developers
A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006.
“We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now,” said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.
The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. “I think Vista probably offset some of the decline,” Andrews said.
The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2 percent, to about 63 percent, in the next year, Andrews said.
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
UK firm moving off Windows desktops to a mix of Suse Linux and Macs
Interesting story over at CNet of a UK firm feeling the “pinch” from Microsoft:
“I feel we are being railroaded, and the market generally forced (us) into a corner or even a cul-de-sac. In a free market, we have made Microsoft dominant, and now we have the collective responsibility to reverse this situation to re-establish balance and competition. If I am being driven down the Vista route, then an Apple Mac is smarter money and cheaper.”
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Meme Games: 3×3 Lessons for Open Source Firms
I was tagged by Stephen O’Grady… while I generally avoid replying to such meme’s, I then saw Luis replied and that put the rest of us tagged on the spot ;-) I am also replying because I probably see a different side of the equation that could potentially help others understand how the IBM-like vendors look at open source firms. Hopefully there may be at least a small level of insight that someone can benefit from in this response. I’ll put the usual disclaimers around this – take it “as is” with no express or implied warranties for fitness for any particular purpose (or merchantability).
I will preface that this meme is about “open source firms” which I assume means companies/profit seekers leveraging open source software as a model to grow – not those who take on the humble task of building free software in a non-commercial intent model (i.e. Apache, Eclipse). Having replied to this meme, I get to name the next round of victims. For that I will now tag Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth, kernel hacker Gerrit Huizenga who participates uniquely with other Linux firms in the community, and finally sogrady’s partner in crime over at Redmonk, Coté. So without further adieu, here’s my quick/dirty 3×3.
3 “Do”s:
1) Do Bring Crisp Customer Value to the Table: Define a value proposition beyond simply relying on being “open source” – there has to be some reason your value proposition is better (i.e. Firms in your industry constantly struggle to integrate X and Y while customizing for individual business units. Our open, modular architecture can be adapted to meet your individual business unit CRM requirements and integrate with X without expensive, lengthy customizations of the entire app) Hitting on a pain point of “closed” alternatives works well too – ask a PBX user how much they love their supplier(s)… turn the pain points (licensing, payment models, etc) into your value prop
2) Do Make Friends, Not Enemies: I once had a _smart*_ once tell me in an opening introductory sentence at an O’Reilly event his job was to use open source to wipe out millions of dollars of IBM’s business until IBM realized they’d have to buy him. That was his first sentence to me ever! – not “Hi, I’m XYZ from ABC, I’d like to find ways to partner with IBM”. The IT business is driven by partnerships, friendships, loyalties, acquaintances, and networking. If you are into open source to make a profit, partner like mad – if you position yourself as the enemy, expect to be killed or worse, ignored and slowly put out to pasture. The person who approached me in that manner is now struggling with the latter issue… I suspect his initial investors won’t hang around long as he still tries to make himself relevant.
3) Do Make the Right Friends – Partner with the Right Partners: The open source firms with a strong management team “get” partnering. They partner with other firms that can enable business and community growth. Just because someone like IBM invests millions in open source communities, Linux, and the community does not mean every open source firm should bet the farm on partnering with IBM. Yes, partnering with IBM has advantages, but IBM can also suck up your precious resources simply navigating the huge array of virtual teams. IBM may also have a differing strategy (and every strategy out of IBM is not necessarily the one that wins in market – you can be different). As an open source firm, your goal is to find the right partners who are naturally aligned for partnering with you. Don’t accept partnerships that have no investment on one side – they’re doomed. Both sides must be aligned and invested. How will your partnership not only create more business for you, but also generate new revenue or reach a new customer base for your partners. I’ve had this discussion with the head a particular open source firm on a few occasions – partnering is by definition mutual – how do we both benefit from partnering? (otherwise, I can’t justify investment and maybe I’m not the right partner for you) Another IBM partner with an open source product just closed another round of investment for ~$25M – they know how to partner in a mutually beneficial model. There will be a lot of news coming in this space…
3 “Do not”s:
1) Do Not Shy Away from Being a Commercial Business – too often companies pitch how “open” they are. While that’s great, how do you make money? It’s as if some open source firms are afraid to discuss how they make money off of free software (free as in speech). This is usually a good way for vendors to weed out the bad firms – if the firm is shy about discussing this, they probably have a weak value prop, and there’s probably more of a “hidden hook” to make customers pay than offer something customers want to pay for. IBM has for a long time been investing substantially in Linux, open standards/source based software, and open source communities – I can’t recall an executive who did not clearly, up-front, and simultaneously articulate how IBM generates revenue from any of those ventures. If you set the tone up front, no one will be surprised or upset later. And if you have a strong value prop – see point 1) – customers will expect your valuable product/service comes at a reasonable price. And one last point is “free as in beer” only gets you one round – downloads do not magically turn into profit later. I don’t care if you have 8M downloads – while that’s great for showing loose interest in your technology, how many are paying you? How many have built a dependency in their applications on your technology? How are you going to generate the revenue needed to fund the next version of your technology?
2) [If you are trying to be the standard as in platform], Do Not Try to Control/Dominate/Dictate an “open” Community Project. I’m not talking about MySQL here – they’re an application/database component. Rather, think about platforms like operating systems, dynamic server languages, portable runtimes, etc. that customers use as platforms to build on. There are many of these succeeding today (RHT, NOVL, PHP, Apache, Eclipse to name just a few). There are others that may have an open source license, but the firm tries to dominate with restrictions and provisions in contributor agreements, including hidden hooks in license terms, or by bundling in non-free (as in speech) components. These firms typically then claim to be leaders and their platform is growing in adoption … yet for some reason… no one partners with them – see point 2) – and they carry the entire development expense with no community-scaling benefits. They invest the R&D and in the end, their “community platform” is just another vendor product that rings well with the vendors existing customers. Consider Eclipse – while it may have started with IBM dominating the “participant list”, it takes a serious approach to vendor-neutrality and open participation for BEA, Oracle, Sybase, Zend, Actuate, Compuware, SAP, CA, and Borland to all join IBM on the Strategic vendors list. The same applies to Linux – look at the Linux Foundation membership list.
3) Do Not Ignore Intellectual Property; Do Not Let Intellectual Property Stifle Your Innovation – First, you cannot ignore the effects and implications of intellectual property decisions. First, there’s the license – not all software must be GPL, but there are serious, practical issues if you decide to create the “XYZ Corp Open Source License v1.0″. License appropriately for the type of developer and user community you’re trying to foster. Second, patents – take a political stance, but don’t get caught staring at the clouds waiting for Congress. File for patents if you can, what you do with them after is up to you, but the Patent Commons, OIN, or some other entity is a great place to house them. Also, don’t be stupid and violate an obviously valid patent. If you’re starting an open source project in a technology area that has established players – hire an attorney to guide you through the minefield. It can be done. Third, figure out the trademark situation. Badgeware is one issue, but not creating a trademarked identity that your “open community” can use in viral marketing and “I’m proud to be an XYZ-user” situations is sheer nonsense. You need to establish legal trademarks, then set clear guidelines for trademark usage up front, make it open, and don’t use your trademark to make people pay you – IMO it’s a poor business practice and creates unnecessary frustration later on. And finally, don’t let IP hold you up. Everyone knows this field is wrought with nonsense and arcane approaches to IP. If you can create value, just hire a reasonable IP attorney to walk you through the field. Take some basic steps to be safe, but don’t spin wheels and tie up valuable resources trying to analyze (or let an attorney make you analyze) every conceivable, possible, extreme angle. IP generally comprises of Patents, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, and Trademarks – use them wisely.
If I had a 4×4 meme, I’d also cover open standards and the importance to lead in driving these open standards as part of your model (see what happened with Spring for instance).
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
BMW sporting flashy new Xen virtualization
http://www.linuxlookup.com/2007/jun/04/novell_supports_xen_virtualization_at_bmw
According to BMW, Xen virtualization technology built into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 will allow the company to increase flexibility in managing server life cycles. BMW will also gain operational and cost advantages in other areas, in addition to having a flatter support structure through the integrated operating system and virtualization layer. Hardware resources can be more efficiently used through server consolidation, and BMW is able to cluster virtual servers and migrate them live from one physical server to another as needed. The company is also currently evaluating Novell ZENworks(R) Orchestrator as a way to manage the resulting virtual data center systems.
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
Details, details… hurts your credibility??
Otherwise “ok” (in this case, not outstanding either) articles often have a small point that just make me cringe… for instance, look at this quote from the article I just linked to…
“The FSF controls the licensing process around open-source software.”
Monday, May 14th, 2007
Bill Hilf… misquoted or misinformed?
I saw this article today and have to wonder if Bill is either misquoted or just severely misinformed…
The Free Software movement is dead,” Hilf said, in a typical quip, as quoted in “The Bangkok Post.” “Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even [Linux creator] Linus [Torvalds] has a job today.”
I’m curious if he was just misquoted, but that does happen. Obviously that was a terribly poor judgment as the free software movement is most certainly alive and well, and there are more people working on Linux than just IBM, Oracle, and Canonical. Bill, take a look at who really contributed to the 2.6.20 kernel Bill - there are many contributors (nearly 2,000 had code accepted just into the 2.6.20 kernel). The free software ecosystem is actually growing further – and many of the participants are Microsoft’s own long time partners. And yes, many of them do make a living (it’s hard to code Linux kernel code while wandering and asking for money on the streets). That is actually Microsoft’s real problem – these guys (and gals) are making a living – it’s an economically self-sustaining model. Sure, they are not making $92M/day like others, but they make a living and enjoy what they do.
Maybe that’s what has Microsoft so afraid that they’re reverting to their usual tricks (e.g. not competing on technology). After all, there used to be a huge force of Wintel+Dell, but even that partnership has changed…
Consider this: Google, IBM, HP, Dell, Intel, AMD, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, SAP, Accenture, China, India, Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Avnet, vast numbers of global and local resellers, consultants, ISVs, and system integrators are all making vast fortunes for their shareholders off of Linux. Will the industry just let FUD tricks stand in their way??? Heck no, this industry invented FUD and certainly knows how to defeat it.
The real problem is that the industry is already defeating it. The MS monopoly is under attack from all sides: ODF, Linux Desktop, Linux server, Adobe RIA, Eclipse RCP, etc, etc and I see these latest threats as last resort efforts from a company clearly concerned about its long term growth. That’s a natural response, but another way to compete is to just fix your products and deliver something your customers want.
Monday, May 7th, 2007
Dell signs up with Microsoft to help make Windows and Linux “work together”
Dell signs on with Microsoft, Novell
Joins alliance to help Windows and Suse Linux work together
It appears to me that Dell pre-paid for SUSE coupons from Microsoft which makes it easier for Dell to sell Windows and Linux together. Given Dell’s lackluster investment in developing Linux in the community, I can’t see how Dell can affect anything to make them “work together” (Samba, AD integration, Xen virtualization?) Most of the typical “Windows and Linux work together” technologies are co-existence or “place nice, work alongside each other” technologies. But this “Alliance”??? What is that?
Actually, this announcement says nothing about technology, but only covers giving away coupons, vapor news with backslapping in front of the press, and “picking sides” in the sense that a market leader is not invited to the discussion. Whoop-dee-doo….
Here’s a thought for next time: announce something that has tangible results to benefit your Linux customers.
And all this just as Dell was winning my heart with Ubuntu…. perhaps… just speculating… perhaps these two announcements are related…. hmm… ;-)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007
DevX Race to Linux 2.0 finishes – this is not your ordinary race
http://www.devx.com/racetolinux/Door/33508
This is an interesting second annual run of the “race to Linux” that challenges developers to take .NET applications and get them up and running on Linux (in the shortest time). It involved 3 rounds with 3 different .NET applications. There were 5 winners (all listed on the site). The cool technology in play here is Mainsoft’s “Grasshopper” (or the product version called Visual MainWin for J2EE) which is a plug-in for Visual Studio .NET that let’s you take a .NET application and export it seamlessly as a native bytecode J2EE application. Behind the scenes, Grasshopper takes .NET code, compiles it into intermediate bytecode, then translates the .NET intermediate byte code to J2EE bytecode, and then pushes the JAR/WAR bits out to your J2EE app server. Of course the developer barely knows what happening, but Mainsoft does this in the background when you use the VS publish features.
So for instance, you can now run your .NET applications within Apache Geronimo right alongside your Java apps… how cool is that?
Anyway, to see how they did it check out the website (not all of the winners used Mainsoft – mono and PHP are in there too).
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
Linux on the desktop hits a new note: geekmysled.com
GeekMySLED.com – brought to you buy the guys at Novell (“the” Guy really)
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Thought for the Day: Economics of Xen+Distro
VMware Infrastructure 3 price for 2CPUs: $1,000 (Basic), $3,750 (Standard)
SLES10 price for a server: $349/yr
Now, to properly consolidate a virtual machine to consolidate say 8 Windows servers, you probably want 4CPUs. That puts VMware at $2,000 for Basic and $7,500 for Standard. I can’t tell from VMware’s paper, but it appears VMware has stated they will use per socket licensing and not per core.
That means that the cost to consolidate 8 Windows servers with VMware is roughly 5 years worth of SLES licenses (not counting any 3yr discounts). You can run Windows on Linux (SLES) cheaper than VMware…. weird when you think about all that you get with SLES.
The real value of this equation will surface once Xen+Linux (or should I say Xen+GNU/Linux) increase in functionality for workload management of VMs. Right now I doubt many would argue Xen is as capable as VMware – but I do believe we’re likely to see feature parity at some point to meet the majority of virtualization users’ needs.
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Linux Foundation Board Members are Officially Announced
http://www.linux-foundation.org/wordpress/?p=336
The declared an aim to attract board members from every corner of the diverse Linux ecosystem, and looking at the list, I’d say the Linux Foundation is off to a great start. Somehow, Microsoft did not earn a board seat with the Novell deal – shocking, I know.
The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced its new board of directors, a diverse group that represents the key stakeholders from every corner of the Linux ecosystem: the Linux kernel community, Linux vendors, distributions and users, as well as individual open source leaders.
Board Members (the URL above has very brief bios if you don’t recognize a name) in alphabetical order by last name:
- James Bottomley, SteelEye
- Wim Coekaerts, Oracle
- Masahiro Date, Fujitsu
- Doug Fisher, Intel
- Dan Frye, IBM
- Tim Golden, Bank of America
- Hisashi Hashimoto, Hitachi
- Christine Martino, HP
- Marc Miller, AMD
- Brian Pawlowski, NetApp
- Markus Rex, Novell
- Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC
- Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu
- Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer Updegrove LLP
- Christy Wyatt, Motorola
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Novell Spoofs Mac-PC Ads with Linux
I found this entertaining:
http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/03/novell_launches.html
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Novell adds Containers virtualization to SLES
It’s official. Virtuozzo is a cool technology although I’m admittedly not a huge fan of the container approach to virtualization. I can see it complements hypervisors and does provide unique options for virtualization, and I know Virtuozzo has a few large customers that really like it. Virtuozzo’s mgmt tools for live migration and template provisioning are very cool – and cost effective compared to some of the other solutions out there.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9887927101.html
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
Novell architect (ex-Sun) Slams Sun / Solaris
I poke at competitors here and there, yes. Today is just one of those days though where someone finally stands up and says something you’ve wanted to say for so long, but just didn’t…
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureID=3225&pagtype=all
+1
Some choice comments in here. It’s worth the read. This one I hear all the time – I spoke to a very large customer just the other day trying to go from Solaris/SPARC to Solaris/x86 and found it would be easier to just go to Linux. Sun’s Solaris binary compatibility claims end at the binary (and oh, by the way, that binary also needs to be recompiled).
“It wasn’t an easy migration — in fact it’s easier to go from Solaris Sparc to Linux because of the availability of tools and utilities, than it is to go to Solaris x86. Applications are scarce and recompiling isn’t simple.
He didn’t stop there either:
He said that Sun’s move to open source Solaris, first mooted publicly back in 2004, was an act of desperation.
And what of SPARC?
He predicted a gloomy future for the company’s software operation, adding that performance is another key issue. He said that benchmarks showed speeds of up to four to ten times faster using Linux on x86 hardware that Solaris on Sun hardware. “One customer — a large retail bank performed a soak test using the latest four-socket chips with eight cores. The Intel chip showed performance up to 30 times faster and 15-20 times cheaper when running SuSE Linux.”
And does Sun at least “get” open source? Java?
“Schwartz ‘gets’ open source but the approach is opportunistic. They’re being dragged towards it. And Sun’s afraid of IBM, which has more Java programmers than everyone else, and that IBM will do to Sun over Java what Microsoft did to IBM over NT.”
Maybe that last comment has something to do with Sun’s JSR 277 “OSGi-killer”?
Monday, March 12th, 2007
ComputerWorld Q&A with Scott Handy (my boss)…
Scott is very transparent and open in interviews. It’s always weird to see someone you work for quoted in full spread articles like this.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9012925
Monday, March 12th, 2007
Plans for OpenSUSE 10.3
Found this slide deck quite interesting. Shows where OpenSUSE is heading for the 10.3 release.
Monday, February 26th, 2007
Dell Responds to IdeaStorm’s Linux Demand
Dell’s full response here. An excerpt re: Linux below. I think this comes up quite short of what the users wanted – but I think this hits a continuously obvious market segment in the corporate desktop space. Should be interesting to watch this unfold. For the consumer segment, it is interesting to see Dell dodge any Linux or at least blank hard drive options… at a minimum, Dell could preload Ubuntu at no cost… and let the user install whatever distro they want.
Pre-Installed Linux Options
It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.
As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don’t want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.
To read about the recent addition of Latitude notebooks to our n-series family, read Direct2Dell from one of Dell’s Linux solution architects, or visit www.dell.com/linux and www.dell.com/nseries.
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Just who contributes to Linux? An in depth analysis of code commits
I had been considering creating something like this myself – I’d almost prefer to build scripts, have them run regularly, store in a database and have a website with the latest stats… but I haven’t found the time (yet).
Back to the analysis, I thought it was very interesting to see IBM’s contributions and leadership in the community. Others.. say… ahem… HP… (hint: look way down the list…) could probably give a little more. I also find it spectacularly exciting that the largest single group to contribute code to the Linux kernel is still random, individual developers. Apparently they reap enough return from participating in this community to make it worthwhile. I think back to my university days and all the academics studying, analyzing, writing, and fixing Linux code – contributing code back (if it made sense) – that’s what makes Linux so amazingly universal.
I’ve seen other analyses like this in the past and its nice to see Novell now up there at the top. Interesting for 2.6.20 was the rise of Quamranet (the guys behind KVM). Hopefully we’ll see them stay up near the top – KVM could be the “Xen” that actually makes Linux a ‘killer’ virtualization platform. One surprising name on this list was Sony – could they be assisting PS3/Linux?
One group of that’s missing are all the “behind the scenes” developers such as some of the developers in the IBM Linux Technology Center (LTC) that work on fixes and aggregate them together before a single point developer merges a consolidated contribution into the kernel. They are the “unknown soldiers” and I suspect other companies have many of them as well. Read the caveats in the analysis as they have an impact on what each list actually means. It’s easy to take something like this the wrong way.
The Linux developer community is what really keeps Linux steaming along – many vendors and many developers – it’s a train, and it’s very hard to stop a train this big. And this analysis is JUST THE KERNEL. Add in all the libraries, tooling, GUI work, packaging, and other supporting software around the kernel and the community explodes. This is why I laugh when I see “OpenSolaris this or that” from the Sun marketing machine – I took a look and 3 community developers accounted for over 50% of their “community contributions” accepted into the OpenSolaris codebase. That’s for an entire distribution – not just a kernel… I put the community contributions in quotes b/c most of the changes are corrections to comments or minor bug fixes – nothing architecturally significant or evolutionary. OpenSolaris forums are a good Solaris user forums – lots of discussions, users helping users, but very little code. Very similar to Gentoo forums but for Solaris users. Hence even 1.5 yrs later, some changes users have been demanding to make still plague the platform. These issues aren’t new, nor is it just a couple users pushing the idea, but you need developers with architecture (and code commit) control in the community to make anything happen – and generally those developers prefer vendor independence. Anyway, off my soapbox. Someone asked not long ago what my issues were… and that about covers it.
And here’s the full link to the LWN analysis report that I highly recommend reading (all the way through):
http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/222773/1b982bab71b59bd9/
BTW, I wonder if we’ll see a microsoft.com domain on there soon with the interop labs with Novell… that would be a fun vendor to see on this list next time.
Monday, February 5th, 2007
If you look at 2 websites today, look at these:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/peugeot_citroee.html
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/compare-to-vista.html
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
News: Novell lands major desktop contract in France
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9524633069.html
Analysis — At the Paris Solutions Linux show on Jan. 30, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-largest automobile manufacturer, and Novell announced the signing of a multiyear contract for the deployment of up to 20,000 Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop installations plus 2,500 copies of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Subscribe to RSS/Atom Feed
