“During the next two to three years, I quite like the prospects for appreciation in Novell’s stock price, but I’d be inclined to stay on the sidelines for the next few months before thinking about starting a position. While I expect Red Hat to remain the sector leader, its dominant position will be eroded as strong competitors such as Novell/SUSE enter and consolidate in the space. It’s still early, and Novell’s transition will take time as management reconciles its various challenges and opportunities.” Read the article at ITManagersJournal.
IT Investor’s Journal: How Novell is becoming a true Linux play
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have a good feeling about Novell/SuSE/Ximian. I’m a longtime Slacker, but I may just switch. Out of the box, Slack is just too old school. And SuSE simply has a better distro than Red Hat, with a wider range of options (whether that be in Hardware, or with Enterprise and Desktop applicability), and they’re interests extend beyond becoming just another player in the UNIX world (as Red Hat has decided to do).
SuSE’s name is what really makes them second to “Red Hat”, not the features (I think they win here). As trivial and vain as it may be to hackers, Novell should brand SuSE and Ximian under their name (or a new one), if only to simplify matters.
I doubt they’ll be second place for long — SuSE and Novell are experts at support and giving a customer options, while all three companies are experts at convenience. And convenience is what Linux still needs. All they have to do now is integrate, and have it all make sense (I’m interested to see what becomes of Ximian and SuSE’s support KDE for instance).
Besides, as immature as it sounds, who deserves a better shot at the Windows market than Novell?
“IT Investor’s Journal: How Novell is becoming a true Linux play”
+er?
I get out of my bed in the morning just to mock headlines with poor grammer.
“+er?
I get out of my bed in the morning just to mock headlines with poor grammer.”
Actually the article is about becoming a play in the stock market, not a player in the Linux OS market. Since those are 2 seperate items, the grammar in the article is correct in the instance it was used.
I get out of bed in the morning just to teach people that don’t know any better.
We already have Red Hat which is also an RPM based distro. Is there realy a need for more than one major player in the Linux market. I like the idea of having all of our Linux boxen running Red Hat.
Redhat is okay for certain things As far as more then one player that is always good. Redhat is aimed at people that have time and can tweak thier settings in order to support certain hardware. Basically I would say for a corporate environment where all the machines are the same and a kickstart install does wonders. For those without as much time SuSE just works. I swore by Redhat until it refused to recognize a firewire drive that SuSE does with no problem. In order to make it work with Redhat I had to run sfdisk and enter the drive parameters manually since Redhat did not detect them properly so would not let me mount it. SuSE sees the drive and I can mount it immediately. Basically it all comes down to the usage. For people that may just want things to work then Redhat is not for them any longer, and SuSE picks up where Redhat leaves off. Just my 2 cents.
So far Novell has done… nothing.
but thier stock is going to average out to Red Hat’s. Why
doesn’t make much sence to be, I’m not a wall street person but you’d think things like this would matter:
1) Not pure open source.(big one, nobody wants another unix)
2) Bad History
3) flat revenue
4) many businesses are _still_ locked into netware, not likely they will be in a hurry to help Novell since they’ve
been trying to migrate for years.
5) completly new business model, and are entering a new market that the competition has the decade of experience and relationships in.
the good:
1) Money, they have it.
2) Wall Street knows who they are.
3) Have had relationships globally
3) IBM invested in them.
I’m not sure the good is even that good. Sure they have money but do they know how/what decisions to make in this new business?
Wall street knows them but they may be too late, wall street knows who Red Hat is now too.
They’ve had many relationships but that has been in a slow decline for years. And it does not appear they are turning that around yet, I’ve not read of many companys announcing new Novell relationships. While red hat is.
IBM player, this one is the best one no doubt. IBM if it decides to junk red hat and only push SuSe to see a gain in thier 50 million investment they would hurt red hat and help SuSe.
Right now a stock market play for Novell would be bad! Nothing good comes from pleasing Wall Street anymore. They’d be much better served staying below the radar, devloping a great product, and setting themselves up for long-term profit rather than attempting to make a big splash on the “street”. I used to work for a small 100 Yr old defense contractor that tried like hell to stay “under the radar” of the corperate raiders. They were flush with cash and the board held controlling interest. The only way they survived the last 20 years was allowing themselves to shrink due to attrition [while staying just barely black] that would never have been allowed by the MBAs!<p>
I think Novell should go after Corel next. Corel’s sort of a lame duck right now…especially after they capitulated to MS and sold out their future for a few millon. Corel’s whole approach to Linux software was exactly what was needed! They made great use of Wine and careful development to make quick and easy ports of stuff from Win32 to Linux. Had they had a chance to attempt to be successful, they would have rocked the industry by using Wine as a great cross platform, intrim tool! They have experience bringing great tools to linux once…i’m sure they could do it again. They have exactly some of the pro tools Linux needs! Stuff like WordPerfect, and CorelDraw, + all the former metacreations tools like Bryce 3D. They also have a decent SVG client& creation tools that would be great to have in the Linux community. In short they are left without a market by Adobe and Macromedia…so linux would again be the only viable market with an opening left for them….and Novell has the $$$ and motivation to pull it off!!
pf wrote:
I get out of my bed in the morning just to mock headlines with poor grammer.
Drill Sgt wrote:
Actually the article is about becoming a play in the stock market, not a player in the Linux OS market. Since those are 2 seperate items, the grammar in the article is correct in the instance it was used.
I get out of bed in the morning just to teach people that don’t know any better.
And finally, I get out of bed in the morning to correct the endless number of folks who misspell separate.
Yes Novell and RedHat have great futures, but their stocks are purely for the risk-prone, particularly since the momentum in the NASDAQ is fading fast as the 2003 mini-bubble starts to implode. NASDAQ has been down for five weeks in a row – this is not coincidence. Given the ridiculous rise in 2003, you have to expect it is going to give back another 20% at least, and thats under the best case. If you are thinking of jumping in now, don’t, you missed bubble2…sit out bust2.
If you think that english grammar is difficult, you must learn portuguese. Anyway, mistakes happen, we are just humans.
As for Novell, I wish them a very good luck. Would be nice to have another big linux player. As far as I can see, who should be unhappy is Microsoft that had a defeated opponent that now reborn from ashes. And no, I’m not an anti-Microsoft zealot, even though I use more FreeBSD and Slackware for work (at home I use win98 too).
If I was Novell or owned their stock, there would only be one
thought that would bother me.
“I hope that none of our customers find out that they could
get Debian for nothing, and it’s probably a better product.”
Novell has some great stuff that you can’t simply get for free, noteably it’s NetWare NetOS + tools. Back in the day it was THE network OS to beat…even Unix tools are mearly add ons compared to Netware. Lots of shops in my area swear by it…even in the day of “easier” MS windows stuff…and linux hasn’t quite caught on yet. It’s a familiar, stable name. Combine with IBM on the server side [note, still playing nice with netware years later!] they basicaly split the profitable markets [enterprise server and software] and give the desktops away for free…they lost them to MS years ago. They might as well be spoil-sports and kill the market as they’ve got nothing to loose by giving away desktop or office software!
As far as why would you buy rather than use debian…IBM Certification! Suse has one of only a handful of fully tested and certified Linux solutions for IBM big iron AIX and AS400 boxes. Sure it’s not “Free” but it’s still cheaper than any other solution and allows you to use FOSS apps on your mainframe…with OEM certified reliability on 32+ cpus! That IBM would recommend SuSe for IBM servers in their own catalog says A Lot about how good it really is!!! Novell now has that great SuSe code as base for it’s own NetOS apps…and ability to run directly on IBM big-iron hardware as well as cheap & messy x86 boxes! Mostly it puts Novell back in the game as direct competitor to MS for backoffice software…an old name when people are desperately looking for alternatives…[something old, something new, something borrowed, and something big n blue. hey they got it all!]
Companies like IBM and HP are better positioned to leverage Linux than Novell, because they are primarily hardware companies, and they see Linux as a way to sell more hardware. Which means that, if Novell wants to be a pure software play, they’re competing in a tight market with an entrenched leader — RedHat — and what does Novell bring to the table? Novell Directory Services (NDS)? LDAP. Migration path for legacy Novell servers? They already tried that with UnixWare. I dunno. This whole thing seems like snake oil to me, only Novell seems a day late and a dollar short.
So far Novell has done… nothing.
but thier stock is going to average out to Red Hat’s. Why
doesn’t make much sence to be, I’m not a wall street person but you’d think things like this would matter:]/i]
Well, it’s not like it’s just Novell..Remember, this is SuSE too, who’s been around almost since the very beginning.
[i]1) Not pure open source.(big one, nobody wants another unix)
An issue yes, but a “big one”? I disagree. Besides, very little of their Linux software is closed, and they’re supporters of not a few projects. All I can ask is: A big issue to who? ESR, RMS? I thought this was about the appeal to Linux devs, users, and the “market”.
About appealing to users: We all know what users want, blah blah blah..I’ll get to the devs in a minute.
As for the market, it only cares about one thing — results — not on a method as to “how” those results can be achieved (Open Source). Open Source is not a big issue to the market, results are. If Open Source provides results, great, but either way, the sentiment is “who cares”.
As for appeal to developers — What more can devs ask for if someone can provide a good tool? What do politics have to do with good software? The important thing to me at least, is that Open Source is first and foremost a great tool. The mixing of Politics and Open Source takes away the attention from the important issue — Productivity. It’s starts becoming about a lot of bullshit, and in the end the main appeal is lost.
It’s a good tool — something which aids developers to be more productive, and it happens to be “free”. I don’t think productivity is there because it’s free, because productivity exists and will exist in propriatary models as well.
For some reason, ESR, RMS, etc., have convinced a lot of devs it’s the “ultimate” way to be productive or something. I say bullshit. Propriatary models can and do work (Companies haved proved this a billion-fold). Whether they’re free or not is irrelevant. What’s important is if developers are communicating, whether it’s with each other, or with the system they’re working with. You don’t have to be Open Source to guarantee that. The only thing ESR and RMS care about isn’t the quality, but the “celebration” of free software. Or maybe it’s just “celebrity”?
You said, “nobody wants another UNIX” — I agree in one sense, but the problem with UNIX was the battle over “what UNIX was”. It was about standards, not sources. By the time BSD and UNIX got their head out of their asses, Linux had arrived. And now Linux needs some standards. Without standards, Devs will create a chaotic mess — and because of this, Linux will have a harder time appealing to the “user”. Hence, no market either.
Agreed, we don’t want another UNIX, but it’s becoming worse than UNIX ever was.
I think the important thing about someone picking up where Red Hat leaves off (i.e. gave up) is providing a standard platform, because somehow Open Source can’t do it on it’s own for Linux (Though I wish it could). As alien as it sounds, I think a company needs to step in and provide something for everyone (Enterprise, Devs, Business, Home). If something’s to be copied from Microsoft, it’s that — not their widgets.
That may be Novell, it may not. I just wish whoever tries it good luck.
Anyways, /rant off…No offense or anything.
Crap..All italics..Sorry =D
I just checked out the top layers of the Novell website. Looks to me like they in the same groove as Redhat. Offering proprietary services on Linux (kernel only). The Linux desktop is not given much space; neither is Linux for that matter. They offer Linux indemnity plans and certifications. I’d rather see some software. Doesn’t look like much interaction with SuSE – yet. Wonder what they are up to for the next desktop release – this summer?.
okay I’ll try to go through this, bare with me.
Well, it’s not like it’s just Novell..Remember, this is SuSE too, who’s been around almost since the very beginning.
Yes, But SuSe wasn’t a real threat to Red Hat, Novell has to bring something more to the table. Last I read Red Hat was 60% of all linux distros being used. And certainly the most popular in enterprise. The original argument was about stock and I just don’t see it as making sence they are rated at the same price. There is alot of hype here that is going to catch up w/ it, atleast initially.
You said, “nobody wants another UNIX” — I agree in one sense, but the problem with UNIX was the battle over “what UNIX was”. It was about standards, not sources. By the time BSD and UNIX got their head out of their asses, Linux had arrived. And now Linux needs some standards. Without standards, Devs will create a chaotic mess — and because of this, Linux will have a harder time appealing to the “user”. Hence, no market either.
I agree with you on the politics to some extent I’m not on a mission to rid the world of closed code, but I DO think it’s
built on a certain philosophy closed code = fragmented standards, where compatibility becomes a leagal issue. If YasT was open source Red Hat would probably use it and we wouldn’t have to learn thier set of tools (productivity), If RPM was kept by Red Hat SuSe would have some other ‘standard’ If Mozilla was closed source on Debian we’d all have browsers that render differently. Applications can fragment just as UNIX standards did. Nobody wants to have 5 distros in thier shop cause one is good for database, another for administration, another for serving, another for hardware detection. We want the same applications on any distro we choose. That isn’t just politics, thats prodictivity.
Agreed, we don’t want another UNIX, but it’s becoming worse than UNIX ever was.
Yeah, I only want a few distro’s, Red Hat, SuSe, (for competition) Debian to keep them honest, And maybe gentoo/lindows that offer nitch services. Other than that
what do all these other guys offer? Mandrake doesn’t stand out as special they are Red Hat with a .fr domain and some
good GUI tools. There are like 10 src based distro’s trying to be gentoo, 20 firewall distros, slackware does nothing special debian/red hat/suse couldn’t offer
I think the important thing about someone picking up where Red Hat leaves off (i.e. gave up) is providing a standard platform, because somehow Open Source can’t do it on it’s own for Linux (Though I wish it could). As alien as it sounds, I think a company needs to step in and provide something for everyone (Enterprise, Devs, Business, Home). If something’s to be copied from Microsoft, it’s that — not their widgets.
That may be Novell, it may not. I just wish whoever tries it good luck.
If open souce code can’t be ‘picked up’ where someone left off how can propriatry? Red Hat pissed some people off so they forked and made white box. If SuSe pisses you off you have the source to a distro with no hardware detection, no GUI admin tools, no edirectory(?) no <next thing they decide to close> That project must start from scratch in very key areas it took years of paid programmers to write. Thats why open source is a big deal. IT gives busineses the peice of mind that no matter what happens to the company, thier investment in the code is still thiers no matter what just the way <distro> left it.
That may be Novell, it may not. I just wish whoever tries it good luck.
I hope not cause that means nobody can pick up after them if the same thing happens. Without a re-invent of the wheel that is.
I’m dead tired, I’m not sure any of this rand will make sense.
I’m dead tired, I’m not sure any of this rand will make sense.
It made sense, thanks for the reply.
I’m aware that you didn’t accuse me of this, but just to clarify: I don’t want to argue a proprietary model over open source. To be honest, I’m just confused. I guess I
could say if something that is closed source is just too good, and could benefit the platform as a whole (YaST), then maybe it ought to be open sourced.
I just wonder though: Where is the line drawn? System level, UI, Libraries, Frameworks? I’d like that, because
if open source can quickly agree on what’s standard there, those standards will attract developers — which means
an all around better OS for users.
But a lot of open source advocates want more it would seem. When is it OK to make software for “leverage”? Is SuSE criticized because YaST isn’t free, or is it because it isn’t free and it’s useful at the system level? There’s a difference if you think about it.
The answers some would give is what makes me wonder how much
Open Source is about technology, and not just politics.
Leverage wouldn’t be leverage if it wasn’t good technology. But “Leverage” seems to be anathema in the OSS world. When attempts are made at it, a lot of the time an inferior replica (or one or two or three) is produced to counteract
— and in the end, it’s even worse…There’s more fragmentation, compatibility and standards aren’t realized, and the only ones satisfied are..well..”easy to please”.
Sometimes projects turn out pretty well, but sometimes not — just because a certain product wasn’t “free”.
It’s not like non-free wares can’t be incorporated into
a competitor’s products. Or maybe even becoming standards as well (by widespread use from end users). Technically and legally, there’s nothing preventing YaST, MP3, or similar things from being in Red Hat or whatever else.
Idealisticly, yes, there’s plenty of preventions — and I say it’s self sabotage, especially if something is good, and makes the overall product better. Inclusion should be judged on it’s utility, not whether it’s open. This is the whole idea behind the “killer app” I guess, and
“somebody’s” Linux would do well to adopt it. Of course not yet, I’d like to see standards at least on the basic level first.
Anyways, gotta run..I hope I made a little sense too. G’Day
Lol, from now I’m using a text editor..Pretty messy
If you invested 10k spread across Novell, Sun and Etrade around the first of the year you’d be $3700.00 richer right now.