The Red Hat, IBM pitch for Linux in the enterprise
By John Lettice
Posted: 25/09/2002 at 17:00 GMT
theregister.co.uk
Earlier this week The Register had an interesting talk
over lunch with Red Hat VP marketing Mark de
Visser, covering a fair range of topics, including how
Redmond finally gets it, what takes its place (no, not
Red Hat, we agreed on that) and the two Next Big
Things for Red Hat - the Red Hat Desktop, and the
Advanced Server deal with IBM. There's a certain
amount of controversy associated with both of these,
but as (with the aid of the Red Hat 8 CD he pressed
into our hands) we'll do a user's eye view of the
desktop later, we'll concentrate on the Advanced
Server strategy here.
Red Hat has been involved with IBM for some
considerable time, IBM has been talking the Linux
talk for some considerable time, but it is the
perception of The Register (which in its turn, has
been hanging around IBM for a not inconsiderable
time) that much smoke and little light has emanated
from the Blue Behemoth. IBM can be a great place
to hunt around for Linux information and support, and
it clearly has numerous happy techies messing
around with the stuff, but how easily can you actually
buy Linux machines from IBM? Sure, you can get
them if you specifically ask for them, but the sales
operation tends not to evangelise them.
This applies in one way at the client level, and in
another at servers. Wintel inertia is epidemic at
client, and does apply to some extent to the Intel end
of servers, but upscale of this at IBM the server
portfolio is sufficiently broad for this not to be the
reason Linux doesn't get pushed. The reason, to
precis de Visser brutally, is because it's free. Or it
was, anyway.
IBM is a huge organisation with many most excellent
salespeople selling large and expensive systems into
areas where the word Windows is seldom uttered.
The competition is Sun, maybe HP (but see our Mr
Orlowski today on the latter's exercise in
self-immolation) and to a very great extent, IBM
itself. IBM's salespeople, as de Visser points out, sell
the stuff that makes them money personally. They
are, after all, salespeople.
So simply sticking Linux onto the checklist is not of
itself going to help much. It will get Linux installed if
that's what the customer specifically wants and asks
for, but otherwise if the salesperson can make more
money recommending something else, then that's
precisely what they'll do. Evangelism failure. You
want evangelism from sales? Bribe them.
The Advanced Server announcement foregrounds
service and support and bringing the various IBM
server offerings into step as far as Linux is
concerned. These are certainly important, but the
sales side is key. There's some sense in the
argument that major companies are suspicious of
software that's free, but making sure the sales team
gets equal or better remuneration out of selling Linux
is probably a bigger factor in getting it out there. De
Visser is confident that with the IBM deal that is now
the case, and that Red Hat now has working for it
tens of thousands of feet on the street, all pounding
in unison (Register rolls eyes incredulously at this
point, but we'll see).
Pricing on Advanced Server is related to support
level, and is an annual fee rather than an outright buy.
That is however the kind of model this class of
customer is used to. It is also still GPL and free, but
Red Hat is supplying this in rigorous 'some assembly
required' form - you want it for nothing, you build it
out of the source yourself. The Register remarked
that this was a sort of escalation of SuSE's
approach, and de Visser brought up the question of
whether we reckoned Red Hat could ship proprietory
software. No, we said. Well what about SuSE?, he
said. Yast is proprietory. Oh, we said dozily, we
didn't know that.
Nevertheless, SuSE is different from Red Hat. Red
Hat is the one the purists worry about, because it
looks like the one with the clearest shot at hitting the
corporate and government sweet spot, and in the act
of doing so it could well turn into the kind of company
that already occupies these sectors. So people are
going to be ever more ready to be suspicious the
more successful Red Hat is, and Red Hat has to be
really good, only to be rewarded with deepening
suspicion anyway, the more successful it is. Upside:
at least Red Hat's rock and hard place aren't
anything like as closely aligned here as Sun's. Yet.
Aside from getting more conventional and
understandable to the non-evangelised in terms of
sales and pricing, with Advanced Server Red Hat is
also making a conscious effort to make it a single,
coherent platform. As de Visser puts it, currently with
Linux you'll get some distributions that one piece of
software is certified for and runs on, but there will be
other packages that won't, so if you've got two or
three enterprise applications you want to run you
might at least have to juggle different releases of the
same distribution. This is not, by the way, forking as
such. It is simply a case of Oracle might have
implemented 9i at so and so level while A N Other
company will maybe slightly ahead or slightly behind.
It'l sort itself out in the end, but by that time we'll
have had a couple more point releases, so it won't
quite be sorted after all.
Therefore, argues de Visser, it is A Good Thing to go
for a slower release cycle in order to get all of the
key apps available at the same time on successive
iterations. Which again makes sense from the
perspective of the corporate market, but again will
surely have the tendency to make Advanced Server a
more distinct and, sort of, not quite Linux really
product, as the rest of the market (Red Hat's other
stuff included) goes charging off at full speed, not
necessarily in rigorously close alignment.
The Register is nevertheless inclined to applaud Red
Hat, on the basis that the route it's taking seems a
logical way to gain commercial success for Linux in
the world as it is now, whereas the alternative of
overthrowing the world as it is now does not seem to
us immediately viable. If something distinctly different
is what it takes to crack the commercial market, then
so be it, that beats not cracking it at all. As we said,
neither we nor he think Red Hat will itself become
The Beast (he might of course be lying), but even if it
does we trust it will be a nicer class of Beast.
Should however the revolution turn into the
directorate, the consulate and then the empire, you
may come round and lynch us. You have our
permission. ®
For more data on the Advanced Server agreement:
redhat.com
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