[sf-lug] The future of Redhat?

[Keith Keller]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 06:09:37PM -0800, Tony wrote:
> 
> Can Red Hat go it alone?
> By Phil Hochmuth
> 
> 
> All this puts the squeeze on Red Hat. Things could get
> really bad for the company if large enterprise ships
> running Oracle flock to the database maker for
> support, and Microsoft/Novell come up with a real
> offering to make Linux/Windows environments run better
> than Microsoft/Red Hat environments.

Well, my $0.01: considering how poorly any Windows environment works at
all, I am extremely skeptical that MS/Novell can make Windows/SuSE work
better than Windows/RedHat.  And, <bias>considering how poorly SuSE
currently works, they have a long way to go to catch up to even
RedHat</bias>.

I think the Oracle announcement has to scare Redhat more: one competent
company competing in the same space as RH is more dangerous than two
inept companies (yes, even when one is MS) competing in a relatively
different space.  RH makes money off service contracts, for the most
part; certainly MS isn't about to do that, and I don't see Novell as
being able to offer better.  But Oracle certainly can, and when
integrated with Oracle dbms support, that could be a great deal for
corporate types who are already tied to Oracle.

OTOH, there will always be outfits that can't afford (or don't wish to
afford, or don't need) Oracle, so there is a niche that RH can fill.
Whether it's a big enough niche to sustain them is a big question.

--keith

-- 
kkeller at speakeasy.net

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/attachments/20061113/f14568e1/attachment.pgp>