The VAR Guy

Novell has found a creative way to put Netbooks and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 in the hands of IT managers and channel partners — even with Microsoft sitting in the same room. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy enjoys creative math. He often blogs about Microsoft’s hourly and daily profits, or the fact that Microsoft’s revenue still dwarfs the entire open source industry. But along comes this blog post from Netbook Digest suggesting the software giant lost $435 million in profits because of the Netbook boom and low-cost competition from Linux. Hmmm…

When Lenovo de-emphasized Novell SUSE Linux on ThinkPads, some skeptics thought it was a serious setback for desktop Linux and Novell’s own open source efforts. The VAR Guy knew better. Fact is, Lenovo was bolstering its Novell relationship in two other areas. Here’s the scoop.