Novell vs. Red Hat: How their Linux strategies affect your data center

Description

More than 90% of all commercial Linux server subscriptions are from Novell and Red Hat, with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), respectively. A Gartner report gives Red Hat more than 60% of the paid Linux market, and Novell more than 30%.

While RHEL and SLES are technically similar, there are some significant differences between the two companies and their strategies. How will these differing strategies affect you, the IT manager, short term and long term? We take a look at some of the important differences between Novell and Red Hat products and strategies, and draw some conclusions on when and how these differences can affect your data center strategy.

Why is Red Hat the Linux market share leader?

RHEL dominates the Linux distribution market from a revenue and shipment point of view. Red Hat was first to market with a commercial Linux distribution and quickly developed excellent relationships with the largest x86 hardware vendors, Dell and HP.

Anecdotally, RHEL runs on 90% of Dell and HP x86 and x64 servers shipped, and certainly runs on more System x servers than SLES (a big reason for RHEL's dominance).

Red Hat used to have a lead with respect to ISVs, but Novell has actually moved slightly ahead in this race, according to counts of ISV applications online for the two companies.

Red Hat has done a great job selling its open source vision and convincing customers that they can lower costs using open source software and that it is safe to use open source software. Novell is a mixed-source company with well over 100 proprietary products. Its focus is spread between Linux-based and proprietary products with most of its annual revenue coming from its proprietary products and services.

Mixed source versus open source

What is ...

Original URL

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1365450,00.html

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1365450,00.html