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The Penguin’s Progress
Time was when the biggest debate about Linux was how exactly
the word should be pronounced. Now, any way you say it, this open-source operating
system that used to be the preserve of geeks and hobbyists has well and truly
come of corporate age.
At the Technology Senate (hosted by Express Computer and Network Magazine last
month) several of the almost 200 CIOs and IT heads present—representing
the cream of corporate India—told me of their desire to increase deployments
of Linux at the server level in their networks.
I’ve often heard such comments before, but the chasm between intent and
action has hitherto seemingly been too wide to traverse. Indeed, while the champions
of open source have been shouting themselves hoarse about the aptness of Linux
for a developing country like India, major mass victories have been barely more
than a trickle. Even in the celebrated Goa Schools Computers Project, where
used PCs were donated to schools, those with Linux were found to be more likely
to lie uninstalled and unused. The Goa government’s Cyberage scheme (offering
almost-free PCs to pre-university students) too did a volte-face on Linux and
purchased Windows licenses in bulk from Microsoft. Not very far away, in Thailand,
on the ICT PC project in which the Thai government is pushing budget PCs pre-installed
with Linux into homes, Gartner Research reports that 90 percent of these home
users replace Linux with pirated copies of Microsoft Windows within a month.
Familiarity with Windows evidently breeds contempt for any other OS on the non-corporate
desktop. But enterprise networks are a different matter altogether. CIOs have
long been convinced of the robustness and financial advantage of Linux, and
the success stories of Linux ‘innovators’ have prompted the ‘early
adopters’ to take the plunge. Taking the Diffusion Theory model further,
we’re on the threshold of the ‘early majority’ jumping onto the
Linux bandwagon.
What’s prompted this newfound enthusiasm from CIOs is the news, early November,
of Novell’s planned acquisition of SuSE Linux—the No. 2 distribution
of Linux after Red Hat—for $210 million and IBM’s infusion of $50
million into Novell.
Faced with steadily declining sales of its flagship NetWare network operating
system, Novell has been flirting with the Linux world and embracing open source
with increasing gusto over the last twelve months. First, the Novell Nterprise
Linux Services ported several of the company’s file, print, messaging and
directory services/solutions (that earlier ran only on the NetWare kernel) to
Linux. Then, in August came the acquisition of Ximian with its leading Linux
desktop solutions (based on the Gnome interface) and stewardship of the Mono
project which aims to enable Microsoft .NET applications to run on Linux. Now,
SuSE takes care of the server side of things.
Add to this Novell’s solid global support capabilities, its widespread
sales channels with deep inroads into large and medium enterprises, and its
training prowess, and you quickly understand how the aforementioned chasm is
on the verge of being bridged. Definitely a master move by Novell, one that
oozes with game-changing potential. For the first time we have a Linux outfit
with all pieces of the jigsaw in one place, and that’s what emboldened
the CIOs at the Technology Senate to toy with the idea of taking Linux deeper
into the network and closer to mission-critical apps.
While Linux enthusiasts rue the increasing commercialisation of their open-source
darling, the Novell entry might well work to their advantage. Novell and IBM
have both been supportive of the open-source movement, and Novell has publicly
stated its intent to step up the support.
Novell in India would do well to actively woo the community and go all out to
quicken the pace of Linux localisation efforts with groups such as IndLinux.
As for Red Hat, which enjoyed a virtual monopoly in India up to now, it will
now have no option but to get more aggressive on its pricing and less restrictive
with its licensing. Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to help keep your
feet firmly on the ground.
Meanwhile, Novell has quite a way to go and a whole lot of issues to iron out
before the recent acquisitions start paying dividends. The track record of the
company on the acquisitions front has not exactly been encouraging—the
Unix Systems Labs and WordPerfect fiascos, while a distant memory, have not
exactly been forgotten. True, the company has a completely different management,
different compulsions and different market conditions applicable at this juncture.
More importantly, this time around, while melding the disparate cultures of
Ximian and SuSE, the entire Novell organisation will have to consciously sever
the emotional cord with NetWare while, paradoxically, still supporting it alongside
Linux.
The balancing act between open-source and proprietary is not going to be an
easy one.
If Novell can pull it off, this will go down in history as the watershed in
Linux’s total corporate acceptance. For the enterprise, then, the penguin
would have finally come in from the cold.
Val Souza, Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com
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