Nokia Partners with Red Hat (Techtree.com) [LWN.net]

Nokia Partners with Red Hat (Techtree.com)

Posted Nov 16, 2006 19:21 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

Hmmm. Fate would seem to be smiling upon North Carolina. This deal. The open-sourcing of Java... days after Novell's deal with MS backfired, causing increased apprehension about Mono's legal standing, instead of inspiring confidence in it, as Novell had intended.

Good news for JBoss. Good news for RedHat.

From what I am hearing, Oracle customers, unhappy with Oracle's support, are in no hurry to switch their OS support contract from RedHat to Oracle. And Johnny Hughes, of CentOS, is reporting that Oracle's verion of RHEL is pretty shoddy.

For a "mortally wounded" company, RedHat seems to be doing pretty well in this "direst of times".

Hey, they may not be perfect. But it looks like if you look to the long term, stand by your principles, provide value, don't try to lock your customers in, and treat them right... you can be successful and fulfill your committment to your investors... all at the same time. A little luck doesn't hurt, either. ;-) (Nor does a lineup of top-notch employees who share the vision.)

BTW, I don't think that you can do all that only half way and come out all right. I also think that you can't do it without truly believing, in your corporate soul, that the strategy will gain you rewards.

i.e. Novell does not have what it takes.

The jury is still out on Sun, but I am beginning to think that they might just have what it takes.

Wouldn't that be cool? :-)

Nokia Partners with Red Hat (Techtree.com)

Posted Nov 17, 2006 14:16 UTC (Fri) by cpm (subscriber, #3554) [Link]

"The jury is still out on Sun, but I am beginning to think that they might just have what it takes."

Well, the fact they are still around at all, means they have done something
right. But their completely neurotic approach to free software, coupled
with their vacillating stances on all things linux, doesn't exactly fill
me with confidence as to what their future is at all.

Nokia Partners with Red Hat (Techtree.com)

Posted Nov 16, 2006 20:34 UTC (Thu) by ebirdie (subscriber, #512) [Link]

"Seeing their phones integrate better with the desktop would also be groovy."

I second that.

I just wonder why all the data phones hold could not be made available as files as has happened pretty much with the data cameras hold and produce.

Oracle and Redhat

Posted Nov 17, 2006 0:46 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

No, I don't think so. Not that I know a lot about it, but I think it's a accurate guess.

If people thought Redhat wasn't credible they would of just ran Oracle on Windows 2003 or Oracle, but now Redhat is the platform of choice for most Oracle stuff.

They certainly added a lot of sales though.

Oracle and Redhat

Posted Nov 17, 2006 1:01 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Although this Nokia stuff is going to help a lot with Linux/Redhat credibility.

Despite what people may want to beleive with big databases or mainframes and such a certain amount of downtime is actually tolerable, especially if it's possible to scedual it. Databases are MIA for minutes at a time. Websites go down, customers trying to fill out forms online with the 'e-commerce' sometimes get the 'try again in 15 minutes' errors. It happens to everybody. File systems, DNS servers, routing equipment. All these will end up being flaky at one point in another...

But 'Carrier-Grade' means something special when it comes to reliability. Real-time interactive communications demands a different sort of mentality then what you typically get with computer systems. With these people they demand the whole trail of nines in 99.9999% aviability and they spend a crapload of money and will pick the best solutions aviable irregardless of cost, because it's always going to be worth it to them.

Then the idea that they would pick Redhat out of all the possible solutions simply because that is what they feel that they need will provide quite a bit of advertising fodder for Redhat.

Imagine that. If people need a sort of file server or website or database backend (or better yet VoIP with Asterix or whatnot) and pointy-haired boss is worried about that 'non-standard open source stuff' a admin only has to say:
"Redhat is good enough for the telecommunications industry, but it's not good enough for you? Seriously.. common man."

:-p

Standard Telecom OS

Posted Nov 17, 2006 9:10 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Then the idea that they would pick Redhat out of all the possible solutions simply because that is what they feel that they need will provide quite a bit of advertising fodder for Redhat.

My guess is Red Hat was chosen simply because it is the biggest and best established Linux player. In telecoms you also want assured long-term support (like 10 ... 20 years), in addition to stability. So RH gets picked even though some smaller Linux vendors had more knowhow in in embedded and carrier grade Linux.

But why Linux at all? Curiously, Linux is fast becoming the standard OS in telecom networks. All companies, not just Nokia. This is a field where Microsoft was never even in the running.