Comments on: Red Hat: One Lingering Financial Question

By: alex

alex — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:49:12 +0000

You miss that things are different for Red Hat than others you mention because of the likes of CentOS. My reasoning being that the channels exist in smaller ways with happy little consultants and IT guys in bigger companies saying, yes you could have Red Hat enterprise and pay but you have me for the support and exact equivalent of the software for nothing.

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:33:56 +0000

@Felipe: Here’s the point… f Red Hat wants global dominance, it will need local feet on the street in all the major markets. You can’t scale a business with a pure direct sales force. At some point, you need to rapidly expand your channel network of resellers, integrators and solutions providers.

The 50 percent direct/50 percent indirect model will always prompt concerns from VARs that Red Hat plans to take certain sales directs. That doesn’t inspire loyalty among partners.

Don’t misunderstand The VAR Guy. He’s generally bullish on Red Hat. They’ve done a great job building a brand and commercializing open source. But you can’t succeed alone when you go global. You need partners in every city…

By: Felipe Contreras

Felipe Contreras — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:15:08 +0000

I don’t get it; what’s your point?

RedHat is a different kind of company, what’s wrong with having other sources of revenue?