[olug] Contested view

[Dave Thacker]

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 07:05, John Dickson wrote:
> I got this from a die-hard bill-boy. He seems to be very set in his ways.
>
> Can anyone tell me how much dround he is standing on? Here is what I
> have....
>
> "What I meant specifically was in enterprise applications.  Linux hasn't
> yet been able to produce enterprise management systems for managing
> distributed environments.  Novell provides application distribution
> platforms, server configuration and management applications, directory
> services, and now with the purchase of Ximian, improved desktop management
> and applications.  These are all things I haven't seen RH and others do
> _successfully_ yet, and are just some of the features I want to see before
> I recommend enterprise-wide acceptance of, or migration to, Linux.
I'll agree with most of this.  You've had to roll your own.  OpenLDAP, 
cfengine, Nagios, were all there, but you needed to glue them together 
yourself.  I saw one of Novell's execs speak at OSCON.  After setting my 
marketing BS filter to "high", I still came away impressed.  Novell's 
aquiring the pieces they need, and putting them into production internally to 
understand them better.   They want some of Microsoft's pie, and I think 
they'll start getting a piece by the end of 2005.
> Novell is the only company I see doing these things, and doing them well, > 
> but they
> may never see the light of day because of their stigma."
Our LAN admin at work would still love to rip out the MS infrastructure and 
bring back Netware.  He's a fan and sees no stigma.  I think MS has the 
stigma, because their products do not provide as much value per dollar spent 
as open source products. I think this guy will be very surprised at what the 
next 18-24 months will bring from Novell.

DT
-- 
Dave Thacker
'We must have had 99% of the game. It was the other three per cent 
that cost us the match.' - Ruud Gullit 
Play PBEM football at http://www.fesl.ht-stats.com