Novell acquires SUSE

Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:01 UTC (Tue) by rise (subscriber, #5045) [Link]

Actually IBM is a lot closer to SuSE than Red Hat, especially at the very high end - mainframes and the largest Unix servers.  Among other things the Common Criteria EAL2+ security certification was a joint effort between them.  I doubt IBM could acquire Novell without severe antitrust concerns, but working tightly together to try eat Sun and HP's lunch and keep MS from gaining too much ground in the enterprise would be right up their alley.  IBM builds hardware and does services (where they make most of their money), Novell does software, distro and services for them.  They'll still compete in some areas, but working together to get a shared platform into accounts will benefit them both.  Novell's fallen a long way, but they successfully kicked Microsoft's ass on Windows for years.

Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:13 UTC (Tue) by rhricik (subscriber, #12189) [Link]

Will this lead, in time, to IBM aquiring Novell?

Back in the early 90's, when I managed a large Novell 4.x network, there were persistent rumors that IBM was going to buy Novell (and this was when Novell was at the top of the pile - so it would have been a significant investment for "Big Blue"). At one point, IBM actually boxed and sold Novell Netware under the "Big Blue" banner. Maybe it is just history catching up to itself...

Having worked with Novell and their support team over the years, I can truthfully say that they worked their butts off to help me. I never got a song and dance routine from them - just results. If they continue to do that with SuSE support, corporations are going to take a good, hard look at bringing in Linux for their projects. Corporations don't care about who has the GUIest interface, the newest gizmoes or thingamabobs or the best advertisements. They care about stability of the product, stability of the company and the support from the company. Novell is still a recognizable world-wide name. Having them back Linux can only be a good thing...

Now, if they only can prevent their automatic "self-destruct" mode and market to the "purse" instead of the geek! ("Geeks" may run the company, but the "purse" owns it!) Unfortunately, M$ has learned to romance the purse and promise the geek that "the next revision will be the greatest yet and fix your complaints"... it's really great marketing company. I have to go back and patch more MS security holes now...