Monday, December 19, 2005
The differences between Red Hat and Novell
I've been meaning to write about this for some time, but couldn't. Firstly, because I couldn't touch on the subject while I was still employed by Novell. Secondly, because i didn't want to create problems for Novell while it was going through its road bumps a few weeks back.
But I thought now was a good time to talk about the differences I perceive in the two companies, having worked at the one and talked extensively with the other. In no particular order....
Customers
Red Hat has long dominated the Linux market. In part this has resulted from serendipity - the company raised gobs of cash in a boom-time IPO and so was the first big player to market - but it also results from the company's rabid focus on customers. Importantly, Red Hat has never wavered from a core understanding that the low-hanging fruit is Unix. A friend there recently speculated that only 5-10% of Wall Street is Linux right now, and Wall Street is an early adopter. This means there's still truckloads of money to be made in converting Unix to Linux, with fewer barriers to doing so (skillsets transfer, dramatically lower cost of hardware, etc.).
Novell, for its part, has had to play catch-up, just as SUSE before it did. The integration of SUSE into Novell's corporate and technology infrastructure took time, and Red Hat extended its lead during that time. However, Novell brings some serious value to the market, including superior support. Customers, like the Swiss government and the UK's National Health Service are leading indicators of Novell's customer resurgence.
It's not the size of Novell's support staff that matters most, I don't think. That matters, but the larger issue is Novell's history and accumulated expertise in supporting operating systems and software, generally. Novell has been doing this for two decades, and they really are leaders in support, certification, etc.
I think Novell still does itself a disservice by focusing more on Microsoft and Windows than the Unix market, but this is changing. It's just hard for the company to give up on its eons-old battle with Redmond.
In short, both companies are improving their customer focus - Red Hat is adding employees (though still at an intelligent pace) to be able to better service customers who spend with them, and Novell is tightening its focus on Linux (and, frankly, shed some jobs to accomplish this) to better meet customers' requirements. Both are well-positioned. I think we're finally going to see some competition in the commercial Linux market.
Culture
Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear. At times, because of how tightly Szulik runs the ship, they simply didn't have enough employees to be able to service all the demand, causing people outside the company to view Red Hat as aloof and arrogant.
This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way. The company's culture is changing for the better along with this shift in opportunity mindset. Novell is becoming less concerned with popularity and more concerned with dollars.
Here, again, I see a convergence between the two. Red Hat is loosening up and Novell is tightening up.
Partners
I already addressed this a little above, but I think the companies are converging here. Red Hat has been historically difficult to work with, in large part because they simply lacked bandwidth to service all incoming requests. So, you were either SAP and Oracle (and a few select others), or you were no one. This was good for Red Hat in that it tightened the company's focus on revenue-generating partnerships, but it was bad in that it now has to play catch-up in being a central part of the growing open source ecosystem.
In that world, Novell is the first choice because it's easier to work with and more generous with terms. Novell is becoming choosier as its clout grows, but I don't sense it's doing so out of arrogance. I think Ron is just instilling discipline. From my perspective as a prospective Novell partner, this is a good thing. I'd much rather work harder to partner with a company that has its act together than to slap together an easy, meaningless partnership that is good for a press release and little else.
Red Hat is also improving its partner programs to accommodate more. Again, this is more a matter of adding employees to cover things than it is a real shift in the company's mindset - Red Hat has always cared about partners. Now it has the people to put meat on the bones of those good intentions.
Conclusion
Novell is growing into its role as a major Linux vendor, and Red Hat is growing into its role as a major company, period. I really like the changes I see in both companies. They're still very different companies with different mindsets, but the differences are narrowing.
source:http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2005/12/the_differences.html
