Submitted by Novell has been pretty much for sale for six months, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Novell’s Linux business may be bought by VMware. Novell’s other assets, which includes Novell Netware, will then be bought by a private-equity backed software company called Attachmate Corp.
It’s pretty clear why VMware would be interested in Novell’s Linux business; not only does this include the SUSE Linux distribution and associated assets, but also software for managing virtualised operating systems – right up VMware’s alley, obviously.
The talks are still under way, and while pretty far on, they could still break down with no deal made. The Wall Street Journal’s sources say that the three companies are still discussing how to divide the sales force, and more importantly, how to handle Novell’s patent portfolio and other intellectual property.
It’ll be interesting to see how VMware is going to handle SUSE. I think SUSE lost most of its shine due to the rather schizophrenic approach by Novell (pushing GNOME so hard), so hopefully, VMware will be able to polish it up a bit.
VMware is better than Novell in every aspect. Red Hat vs. VMware is an interesting battle.
VMware Enterprise products are top-notch, rock solid, innovative (and pricey). If VMware can put all their enterprise know-how into SuSE Linux… We have a new Linux champion.
Seems like a pretty unfounded blanket statement to me.
Not at all. One has simply to look at their respective market caps and stock price, VMWare being 15 times larger than Novell and all.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=novell+vs+vmware
And what has that got to do with anything? Novell is in a vastly different market than VMware. Yes, their stock/market caps/etc. show how well they do in their own market, but that is it. It doesn’t say anything about how they would do in the other’s market. So your comparison is by an large apples-to-oranges.
Yes, Novell has done some virtual machine work; but only to integrate with other virtual machines, and namely Microsoft’s VirtualPC and HyperV at that – rivals to VMware. Novell does not write, support, maintain, or service virtual machines in any other respect.
VMware has been king of the virtual machine world for a long time. So why do they all of a sudden need SLES/SLED/SuSE/OpenSuSE? They don’t. So the sale to VMware makes little sense unless there is some ulterior motive of which we are not party to.
It looks like VMware is building up a library of applications to run on their VM servers.
A few months ago they bought Zimbra, and that really didn’t make any sense. Now they are looking to buy SuSE from Novell.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they buy up more applications in the near future and start offering appliances based on SuSE. Since VMware would own SuSE, they wouldn’t have to pay licensing fees to distribute the appliances.
They are already the VM market leader, so they might be thinking they should capitalize by offering optimized apps that run on top of their hypervisor. Why would you go to a third party when VMware has a packaged application ready to go?
Sounds like they want to compete more with Microsoft, since Zimbra was an open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Add Linux to that, and you can start booting Microsoft out of the server room…
They can already ship SuSE without having to pay license fees. Or RHEL for that matter. Doesn’t mean they customer won’t get updates (since SLES/SLED/RHEL rely on pay-locked repos for updates), but they can deliver a system.
Because there are cheaper ways to get the same thing?
If you have such opinion on VMware products, you are one lucky person. A lot of us had their share of crashes and lockups with ESX servers. Also, their choice of OS – ESX based on Linux, Virtual Center running on Windows – seems kind of thouthless and amateurish.
Indeed. It seems as though Suse would similarly be as rudderless under VMware as they are under Novell.
For me, it was VMware Server on Debian. They deliver an Ubuntu package of VMware Server but can’t deliver one that drops on top of Debian Stable 64bit? booo! (but Virtualbox is treating me very well for non-professional needs).
VMware is run by bunch of ex-Microsofties. Maritz is one of main characters in infamous Halloween documents and first thing he did when he become CEO of VMware was to un-GPL Spring TC server. Expect all kinds of crap if VMware gets SUSE.
Edited 2010-09-21 01:17 UTC
I always have to keep in mind, that VMware belongs to the EMC Corp (also RSA Security and others). EMC doesn’t have an OS yet…
A problem with sales and acquisitions is who buys the different offloaded segments.
I assume one of the slices of Novel will own the Unix copyrights?
The last thing we need is a resurrection of the zombie that is SCO.
It probably has a lot of other copyrights and intellectual property that could do serious damage in the hands of other organisations.
Also: What happens to Mono/MonoTouch/Moonlight/Miguel?
Mono would prosper, possibly:
http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2010/09/17/VMware-2b-SuSE-Microsof…
That blogger reminds me of Miguel in his naive view of working with Microsoft. Microsoft hates Linux, the Novell deal never changed that.
For one I am sure there are all kinds of clauses that MS wrote into their agreement that activate in case Novell is purchased to protect their IP from being used against them.
Since Mono goes beyond C# which is an ECMA standard they are on very shaky ground.
There isn’t much to monetize anyways unless they plan on closing the source. Mono ASP.NET is free and open source and it still isn’t being used much because very few websites need more than a VPS. Anyone with a website that requires a dedicated server can afford Windows Server.
Though I work with .net I never understood why Novell was so interested in investing in Mono. Nokia has the right idea which is to invest in a cross-dev platform and use c# as a binding. Instead of piggybacking asp.net Novell should have invested in their own web framework.
I don’t think Microsoft hates Linux, what Microsoft will do is start charging for the patented technology which eventually will jack up the price of Linux distributions so that the ‘price advantage’ of Linux goes. Once the price advantage of Linux evaporates then Microsoft believes that they’ll be in a stronger position to win customers over based on non-price factors such as “we’re a really big company – no one ever got fired for purchasing Microsoft”. Its a nice easy way to remove the one big advantage that Linux has thus forcing the issue back to technology – something that Microsoft can compete with quite easily rather than entering into a pricing war that results in decreasing profit margins.
I think Ballmer hates Linux and mainly injected cash into Novell as a move against Red Hat. It didn’t work and MS might decide to cut out while they can and take .net with them.
*shrugs* I simply don’t see Mono gaining traction in the *NIX world because of the lack of native development tools up to the same standard of what Microsoft provides. I look at Visual Studio and Expression Studio and I don’t see a single thing in the *NIX world that can hold a candle to it. Mono on the server side just isn’t scalable either; they retrofit some VM stuff together and call it a framework but as soon as you chuck it on a site with several hundred thousand visitors per day the thing will go belly up. So it just doesn’t have the strength in any areas hence people stick with Java.
I don’t believe Microsoft has any ‘evil plan’ in store for the OSS world other than producing great products and marketing on those strengths. When push come to shove and one looks at the cost of going with a commercial Linux compared to Windows the main competition for the Linux world is the commercial UNIX world (but that might change with Oracle now owning Solaris). For Microsoft their shipments keep going up and up without needing to even sneeze at the Linux world. This ‘scaremarketing’ by the Linux advocates simply exposes their fear of Microsoft than Microsoft fearing anything to do with the *NIX world.
Perhaps not, but Mono has at least found one high profile use in Unity3d. So, even if most of the *nix people have no use case or it has found traction in a fairly important product.
Neither do I but MS might want to pull out with their tech to make sure VMware has nothing to work with.
I wouldn’t describe it as an evil plan but I think the deal with Novell was a strategic move against Red Hat and not the result of a desire to improve interoperability with Linux. They could do that without propping up Novell and if they were serious then they would be have gone to Red Hat first since it is far more commonly used in enterprise.
They underlying motivation was to keep a Linux competitor alive against Red Hat and then have a pet Linux distro in the enterprise to possibly monetize or play with later.
Not that simple actually. I think there are those in Linux land that fear MS and vise versa. I don’t think MS is stupid enough to not have a healthy fear (or respect if you will) of Linux. I think MS is certainly worried about Android.
Both have good reason to have a healthy fear of each other.
Apple competes with MS on the desktop but has made it clear that they don’t care about the enterprise market.
What Linux really threatens is Windows Server and SQL Server. Windows Server Web Edition exists entirely to make WS more competitive with LAMP stacks.
I think they both provide good competition for each other on the server and I also think that Linux advocates were right to be skeptical of the Novell deal. MS does not want to help Linux become more competitive with WS. They could have improved Nix interoperability without injecting cash into Novell.
I don’t see how. I can’t fathom what use VMware would have for Mono. I don’t see what use Novell or Suse has for it to be honest, because all that’s written with it is a handful of useless tools full of their own self-importance. There’s no server apps written with it on the scale of Java or .Net in the Windows world.
I doubt whether anyone paying to run some .Net applications on Suse is covering the large costs.
Edited 2010-09-20 13:02 UTC
With SUSE Linux Enterprise in the hands of VMware, will the patent covenant (and tight collaboration) between SUSE Linux Enterprise developers and Microsoft survive part and parcel? Personally, I think SUSE Linux will be better off with VMware than it ever was with Novel.
Edited 2010-09-19 20:21 UTC
I’m a huge fan of openSUSE, the openSUSE Build Service and SUSE Studio. I’ve built three appliances, I run openSUSE 11.3 on my workstation and laptop, and I’m hoping whoever buys SUSE will increase investment in these technologies, not kill them. From what I’ve read, VMware isn’t the only potential acquirer, and some of the other names I’ve heard seem more likely to kill it off as a competitor rather than invest in it. So I’m on the lookout for a plan B, just in case.
“It’ll be interesting to see how VMware is going to handle SUSE. I think SUSE lost most of its shine due to the rather schizophrenic approach by Novell (pushing GNOME so hard), so hopefully, VMware will be able to polish it up a bit.”
Well, I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I can’t speak about SLES or SLED – I don’t use them – but openSUSE has since 11.2 made the KDE desktop the default, not GNOME. And all of the desktops – KDE, GNOME, LXDE, XFCE and even IceWM – integrate nicely, they all have an “openSUSE branding”, and they all “make sense” to a Windows user in a way that most of the other community distros’ desktops don’t. Novell’s integration with OpenOffice.org and Firefox is nice, too. In any event, they certainly don’t “push GNOME” and they certainly don’t seem “schizophrenic” to me.
But really – it’s the release engineering, the build service and the SUSE Studio that have me sold on openSUSE. Please, VMware, if you do buy this, invest in it, don’t kill it!
—
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
http://borasky-research.net/2010/07/07/smartznmeb-status-update-roa…
“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.” – Paul Erdos
This point about openSuSe is true now, but it wasn’t for a while.
SLES and SLED are heavy pushers of GNOME/Mono. Mono is effectively a dependency in order to run either of those, and Mono contains two parts … it contains a C#, GTK#, CLI etc part which are open standards, and it also contains ports of ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Winforms, which are Microsoft proprietary technologies for which no “promise” exists.
There really is not place for the latter on any freedom software server or desktop.
SLES and SLED are not freedom software, they are proprietary (server and desktop respectively) OSes, with full-blow restrictive EULAs and the like. There is really no need to subject yourself to this, just don’t use SuSe.
Edited 2010-09-19 23:08 UTC
There is a fair amount of Mono integration in the openSUSE desktops as well. My impression was that what was in SLES and SLED was first released in openSUSE and then incorporated in SLES/SLED.
Now that I think about it, I wonder why there isn’t a “community respin” of SUSE Linux Enterprise, analgous to CentOS, Oracle Linux, Scientific Linux and the other respins from the Red Hat source RPMs.
Not only that but some Novell programs were built with Winforms.
I also find it funny that both you and I were voted down in this thread.
If MS really wanted to bring .net to Linux they would have done it themselves, and more importantly they would have started with OSX. Though I am a fan of .net Miguel reminds me of a kid who wants to hug a tiger because it looks soft and furry.
MS has been very clear that only C# and the CLI are ECMA standards and within the community promise. Miguel and Novell made a huge mistake in cloning Winforms and other proprietary components of .net. Since .net was already moving to WPF MS probably didn’t care at the time and thought it might be useful for future leverage. With ASP.NET MS can just tie newer versions to Windows Server. MS is keenly aware that developers like myself who use ASP.NET want the latest version and want to run it on the platform that it is designed for. ASP.NET on Linux is solution that no one is asking for.
There certainly is a place for them on my OSS desktop, and my server, if I so choose.
I’m not sure what this “Freedom Software” you keep talking about is, but by telling people what does and doesn’t belong on their desktop, or in their distro, you are trying to restrict peoples freedom to choose. Doesn’t sound like “Freedom Software” to me.
That’s what OSS is about, choice.
I predicted this several years ago when Suse got taken over, but I doubt anyone will remember……
Novell has been sinking for some time and they’ve utterly squandered Suse and the opportunity to really do something with Netware and their other software.
Attachmate is a good company and we used them a lot for emulation of tn3270 sessions. Netware/eDirectory is a good acquisition for this company! I hope they go back to the Netware name and call it something basic like Attachmate Netware. That has a ring to it.
Maybe VMware will add the VMware Tools into the kernel, and I won’t have to reconfigure them every time I do a kernel update.
Who am I kidding. They’ll patch the SuSE update tools, and that will be it, if at all.