On Novell's acquisition of SUSE

On Novell's acquisition of SUSE

Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:42 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368)
In reply to: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE by Cato
Parent article: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE

As for the Novell acquisition - a competitor of my employer was taken over by Novell a few years ago, and that was the last we ever heard of them... Hopefully Novell's focus on Linux is significant enough that they'll make a success of this acquisition.

I was a sysadmin in a Novell shop for a few years, then our management team decided to consolidate on one platform, and because of no other reason than the fact that they were bombarded with MS advertising, they chose Microsoft. I know this because of subsequent meetings with them, where I asked point blank why MS was chosen to replace a technically better system. It was because the market was buzzing more with excitement over Microsoft Exchange (read: MS was pumping massive amounts of cash into the advertising game), and if we adopt Exchange and have to run MS Windows for it, why not run MS Windows on all the other servers? (these managers were not the technical type at all... just the type of people MS sales people go after). It was a miserable time and a massive downgrade.

But all that is said just to make my point: Novell has always had technically superior products, but they don't market worth a flip. MS has always had technically inferior products, but they advertise so aggressively that the average person would think the world might stop spinning if MS products were to go away. There's really no telling what fine software Novell has to offer. We'll never hear about it.

I hope they get it in their heads that technology alone won't do it against the worlds most aggressive marketer (read: most willing to lie, cheat, or steal to make money), Microsoft.

MARKETING IS KEY!

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