When Red Hat and Microsoft announced a virtualization partnership on February 16, both companies directed most of their messaging to customers. Now, Red Hat is back — promoting the Microsoft relationship to channel partners, and taking a thinly veiled shot at Novell. Here’s how.
In a February 18 blog post, Red Hat says the Microsoft deal will deliver a “bigger opportunity for channel partners.” Sure, the blog entry contains some marketing hype. But let’s give Red Hat (and Microsoft…) some credit here: The duo signed a partnership that serves customers and partners — without spinning up any patent controversy along the way.
According to the Red Hat blog post:
Both companies signed straightforward certification and validation agreements indicating that we would join the other’s virtualization validation/certification program, which means ultimately our customers and partners win.
Oh, And About Novell…
Re-read that blog post again, and you’ll notice the following four key words: “Straightforward certification and validation agreements.”
Read between the lines, and Red Hat essentially is:
- Declaring the Red Hat-Microsoft deal to be a smarter engagement than the Novell-Microsoft deal
- Criticizing the Microsoft-Novell relationship for complicated patent agreements that triggered a fury among some open source advocates
Hmmm. Let’s let Red Hat enjoy the moment — at least for the next few days. Novell on February 26 will step into the spotlight with its quarterly earnings results (here’s a preview). If SUSE Linux sales are continuing to grow, Novell will likely silence more skeptics who questioned the Microsoft-Novell relationship.
(Full disclosure: The VAR Guy wrote off Novell in mid-2007, but ate crow when he discovered growing momentum for SUSE Linux among channel partners…)
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Time changes things. What looks like a good deal now for Novell may be a disaster later. As GNU/Linux doubles and redoubles its presence, the Novell deal will begin to cost Novell. RedHat’s deal looks more like openness in virtualization which could be good.
The 2003/8 servers look to be very solid platforms, comparable to GNU/Linux in some ways. Which platform to choose as host is interesting. In my shop we have legacy apps that may well determine that 2003 will be the host. Unfortunately, the apps are 32bit which really reduces the value of using 2003 as the 32bit host. We may well end up with GNU/Linux 64bit as the host with 2003 32bit for legacy apps and GNU/Linux for everything else. I really would rather use GNU/Linux throughout. There is hope. The second-in-command visited my humble lab and saw Debian GNU/Linux snap and snarl on a few thin clients in a lab full of XP kittens. He is the guy who mandates that we run that legacy database…
I forgot some details from
http://idea.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/758004/000075800406000109/novl-8k_110706.htm
“Microsoft agreed that for three years it will not enter into an agreement with any other Linux distributor to encourage adoption of non-Novell Linux/Windows Server virtualization through a program substantially similar to the SLES subscription “certificate” distribution program. ”
“Novell will make ongoing payments of at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft based on percentages of Novell’s Open Platform Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues.”
It looks to me that M$ may have trampled the intent of an exclusive deal with Novell and that Novell will pay a tax as its business grows. This is more diversification for M$ but only temporary benefit for distributors of GNU/Linux.
Of the two, RedHat looks like it got the better deal. The message is clear that anyone who deals with M$ is much better off to wait them out. I expect this will give a huge pop to RedHat’s business as customers of M$ will be much more comfortable trying RedHat and there are many more organisations running that other OS than RedHat GNU/Linux. Diffusion should prefer RedHat.
I’ve heard it from a reliable source that Phelps failed to ‘sell’ a patent deal to Red Hat (Horacio Gutierrez has just been promoted BTW), so it’s possible that Microsoft is letting the Novell plot go down the can (not without getting the Moonlight/Mono infection inside GNU/Linux) while trying to coerce Red Hat customers somehow.