Open Source and Linux
Seriously, why do you still have an iPhone?
All right, I get it. The iPhone is certainly a leader in both terms of sales and product ingenuity. I have often been known to blast Apple for being late to a party, then claiming they are introducing some incredible new feature (see Spaces vs Virtual Desktops). I won't hide the fact that I am not a fan of Apple. Even so, the iPhone is truly something innovative.
Red Hat revenues swell to $209.1m
Red Hat is not as precisely coupled to the economy as many other IT players. Throughout the Great Recession, Red Hat got its brim a little wet, but it never blew off Wall Street's head and got trampled in the mud like so many other companies. And as the economy recovers, the commercial Linux operating system and JBoss middleware distributor is growing at more or less the same rate – like nothing ever happened.…
Red Hat Hires Novell Veteran for Virtualization Push
Red Hat has hired a Novell veteran to lead the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) push into the IT channel, The VAR Guy has learned. Kevin Pereau, Novell’s former director of ISV ecosystems, joined Red Hat about six weeks ago. Here’s the update, plus a closer look at how Red Hat plans to position RHEV against VMware vSphere and and Microsoft Hyper-V.
At Red Hat Partner Summit in Boston, Pereau and Navin R. Thadani (senior director of Red Hat’s virtualization business) sat down with The VAR Guy about an hour ago. Pereau said he joined Red Hat to help drive RHEV product marketing, and he’ll work closely with Red Hat North American Channel Chief Roger Egan and Global Channel Chief Mark Enzweiler.
The RHEV push stretches all the way up the CEO position, where Jim Whitehurst says RHEV is a lower-cost, higher-performing alternative to VMware, though Whitehurst concedes RHEV needs to match VMware’s overall management tools.
Meanwhile, Thadani claims RHEV offers channel partners four key advantages over rival virtualization options:
- Unmatched performance and scalability.
- A proven security infrastructure, based on Red Hat’s experience with Linux security.
- An ecosystem of hardware and software partners.
- Cost savings that deliver more profits to partners. In one scenario, Thadani claimed RHEV delivers (US)$1.70 in partner profits for every $1.00 of RHEV sold, compared to $0.40 in profits for every $1.00 of VMware sold.
Of course, it’s difficult for The VAR Guy to confirm or dismiss those profitability claims.
Even if RHEV offers cost benefits over VMware, some channel partners tell The VAR Guy they’re sticking with VMware because of that platform’s proven management tools and VMware’s proven ability to save hardware dollars while improving server utilization rates.
Still, you can bet Pereau will be working closely with Thadani and the Red Hat channel team to recruit and certify RHEV partners. Red Hat announced a channel specialization for RHEV partners in mid-2009. The VAR Guy will be checking Red Hat’s latest financial results (scheduled to be announced this evening) to see if Red Hat discloses how RHEV is performing so far.
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Read More About This TopicHow do you explain the open source way?
This open thread is an opportunity for you to tell us how you explain what the open source way is, but without mentioning software or technology.
Red Hat CEO: Cloud Can’t Exist Without Open Source
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst (pictured) says open source can exist without cloud computing, but cloud computing can’t exist without open source. Whitehurst shared that nugget — and about a dozen other thoughts — during an interview with The VAR Guy at Red Hat Partner Summit in Boston. Here’s a recap of the conversation and a look at where Red Hat is heading next.
For the sake of fast blogging, all of the nuggets below are paraphrased. But the bullet points and FastChat video capture the essence of Whitehurst’s thoughts. Here we go…
Click here to view the embedded video.
Among the thoughts Whitehurst shared…
1. Old IT models don’t scale: Twenty years ago, your best IT experience was at work. Now, the best IT experience occurs in the home and it’s often absolutely free, thanks to services like Google, FaceBook and Twitter, Whitehurst says. As a result, CIOs and partners need to adjust their mindsets. Which brings us to point two…
2. Don’t sell functionality: CIOs don’t want features and functions. They’ve got enough of those. Instead, they want employees to “use what they want, when they want to” with subscription type payment models, Whitehurst says.
3. More Thank Linux: Red Hat has the benefit of being the Kleenex brand of Linux, Whitehurst asserts. But Whitehurst wants partners and customers to remember that Red Hat has a broader product portfolio that features JBoss middleware and virtualization. He views Red Hat as an open architecture company, allowing customers and partners to mix and match Red Hat components with third-party software.
4. Red Hat vs. VMware: Some critics allege that Red Hat’s virtualization strategy is purely based on price benefits vs. VMware. But Whitehurst sees the strategy differently. On a performance front, Whitehurst says Red hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) beats VMware. But when it comes to management tools, Whitehurst concedes Red Hat is in catch-up mode.
Still, Whitehurst compares today’s Red Hat vs. VMware to the old Red Hat vs. Sun Solaris war. Initially, Red Hat beat Solaris on price. But over time, Red Hat’s Linux story gradually gained more and more management capabilities. The same trend will repeat itself with RHEV vs. VMware, Whitehurst assets.
5. On Acquisition Rumors: Two sources tell The VAR Guy that Red Hat may be looking to acquire Groundwork Open Source. Whitehurst says Red Hat doesn’t comment on rumors. But he says Red Hat has ongoing business relationships with Groundwork and other systems management companies.
6. On A Rumored Business Intelligence Strategy: Reports in 2009 suggested that Red Hat was going to make deeper moves into the BI market. Whitehurst confirmed that Red Hat still has an investment in Jaspersoft, though Whitehurst says Red Hat also maintains close relationships with Pentaho and SAP, among other BI specialists.
7. On Red Hat in Small Businesses: Cloud computing represents Red Hat’s doorway into small businesses, Whitehurst says. He added that 90 percent of today’s clouds leverage Red Hat’s software.
8. On the Cloud Potentially Stealing Open Source’s Thunder: Whitehurst said that wasn’t the case. Pointing to Amazon Web Services and Google, Whitehurst asserted that the cloud can’t exist without open source. Of the major cloud strategies, only Windows Azure seems to be closed source, Whitehurst added.
9. On the database market: Red Hat will continue to work closely with a range of database partners rather than betting on one database, Whitehurst said. The reason: Databases are not commodities. No single database, he added, does everything great. In terms of raw numbers, Red Hat’s biggest database partner is Oracle. But Red Hat will continue to work closely with IBM DB2, Enterprise DB, Ingres, MySQL (now owned by Oracle) and other options, he added.
10. On emerging market opportunities: In recent quarters, oil and gas customers have increasingly landed on Red Hat’s top customer lists.
11. On Red Hat and the desktop Linux market: Red Hat will make “some” but “not a lot” of effort in the desktop market. Whitehurst says he wishes “Ubuntu all the luck in the world but I don’t know why anyone would pay for desktop Linux. The demand is there but how do you monetize it?”
Red Hat will continue to develop and promote its desktop Linux offering, but the far greater priority for Red Hat is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) push, Whitehurst said.
Next MovesRed Hat is set to announce quarterly results tonight (June 23). The VAR Guy will be listening for more clues about the company’s business performance and strategy.
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Read More About This TopicOpen Economics: Inspiring confidence through transparency
Market confidence is a valuable commodity in tough economic times. And governments will try just about anything to inspire some. Recapitalization--bailouts--for struggling sectors is one approach. Another (less deficit-inducing) solution seeks to inspire confidence through a sizable dose of transparency. Bank stress tests are beginning to figure prominently in the later effort. Stress tests measure how well financial institutions perform under financial "what if" scenarios.
Poll: How do you get your music?
If you have ideas on articles about music that you'd be interested in, let us know in the comments. We'll do our best to tune-up a blog post.
Two tips for meeting survival in an entrenched bureaucracy
It might be a better world if we all worked in open, collaborative organizations where the best ideas win. But unfortunately, the reality is that bureaucracy still rules in all but the most progressive companies. We have a long way to go. The reality doesn’t always match the dream.
In the real world, we generate great ideas, propose elegant solutions, and then force them to run the bureaucratic gauntlet. “the best ideas win” becomes “the safest ideas win” (and then lose eventually) as they travel through the bureaucracy and its meetings.
Can a FOSS Firm Hit the Billion-Dollar Jackpot?
Likewise Software: Good Momentum Ahead of Red Hat Summit
Likewise Software — which promotes Active Directory across Mac, Unix and Linux — says it has generated 100 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Likewise will talk up its apparent momentum at this week’s Red Hat Summit in Boston. Here are the details.
“More than half of Likewise customer server licenses are on Red Hat — so our relationship with them is a critical one,” said Tracy Lothringer, director of strategic alliances, Likewise, in a prepared statement.
What Likewise brings to the Red Hat table, according to the press release, is the ability for any machine running Red Hat to join an Active Directory domain. The Likewise Enterprise product goes a step further, enabling enterprise users to manage group policies and create reports for regulatory audits.
Likewise is just one of many companies that’s going to be showing off their Red Hat solutions next week, so stay tuned for more.
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Read More About This TopicStrategic Planning the Wiki Way
BE BOLD. Those were the closing words of Eugene Eric Kim's enlightening talk at our first Open Your World forum. To what was that advice pertaining? Look no further than the title of Kim's presentation: "Wikimedia: Strategic Planning the Open Source Way."
The big open source news opportunity
Want to beat the you-know-what out of your local newspaper “monopoly?”
Open source has found a way.
Your two ingredients are:
- OpenBlock, an open source version of Everyblock, which lets you organize police reports, real estate sales, restaurant reviews, and anything else in your local area, keyed to location, and
- YouTube, which now offers online video editing, social network marketing services, and YouTube Direct, which aims to leverage what it calls citizen reporting.
Your site will live locally only in part. Much of it — the high-cost video part of it — will live mainly in the Google cloud, brought to your readers through embed links.
The key to it all is OpenBlock, which was first funded by the Knight Foundation as Everyblock, then sold to MSNBC in 2009.
The expansion of the open source project is pushed by two newspapers, The Boston Globe and the Columbia (Missouri) Tribune. The funding, again, comes from Knight, but the largest part of the funding goes to OpenPlans, which already has a number of geo-based projects underway.
As the deal indicates this is all aimed at making local newspapers relevant in the Internet age, but since OpenPlans is an open source project there is no reason why new entrepreneurs can’t take advantage of it.
You can start by looking at another OpenPlans project, StreetsBlog, or consider another open source project, the new WordPress. It is, as noted earlier today, a full-fledged Content Management Service, meaning it can scale to where you want it. Or, if you think you need professional help with your CMS, check out Acquia.
The point, as I have said many times, is to organize and advocate your local market. Geographic-based services help with the organizing, and community-created videos can create the advocacy.
The time is now, and the opportunity is here. Newspapers will never seize it. They haven’t over 15 years. You can. Just remember to start from the ad side in, linking buyers and sellers, then move out to advocacy, not the other way around.
The future of local news is open.
Crowdsourcing vs. collaboration: Which yields superior results?
Lately I feel like I'm trapped in an endless loop of a certain Steve Ballmer moment, except the refrain is “crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing” on one hand, and “collaboration, collaboration” on the other. It seems everyone has jumped aboard either the crowdsourcing or the collaboration train. Call me a fence-rider, but I'm staying firmly on the platform.
Sure, I believe there is wisdom in crowds. But there is also power in collaboration.
Canonical's (Possibly) Excellent Adventure
Red Hat Virtualization: Cheaper Than VMware, Microsoft?
When Red Hat Summit starts June 22 in Boston, Red Hat will maintain a careful virtualization balancing act. During one session, Red Hat and Microsoft will discuss how they work together on virtualization. But during a separate session, Red Hat will describe how Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) offers cost advantages over both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. Here are the details.
The chatter will involve Chuck Dubuque — a product marketing manager at Red Hat. At the summit, Dubuque is expected to describe how traditional customers typically spend about $5,000 to $7,000 per server for virtualization, with Red Hat apparently charging significantly less for RHEV.
According to the conference agenda, Dubuque also is expected to cover:
- Cost comparisons to VMware and Microsoft;
- Examples of pricing 100 Windows and 100 Linux guests; and
- Technical features of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization that reduce hardware costs, such as thin provisioning and memory page sharing.
The VAR Guy certainly is intrigued. In many ways, Red Hat is an upstart in the virtualization market. The company spent some time promoting RHEV in 2009, but a more concerted effort — a sort of Virtualization Acceleration push — will likely surface at Red Hat Summit 2010, according to Red Hat Global Channel Chief Mark Enzweiler.
By the way, several candidates for Red Hat’s various channel partner awards have strong RHEV business practices. (Stay tuned for more details next week…)
Still, RHEV has its share of skeptics. Even if RHEV truly costs less than VMware, many pundits plan to stick with VMware because it’s proven in the market and delivers cost savings compared to traditional hardware-centric server purchases.
Red Hat could also face new competition as Novell and VMware partner more closely on Linux virtualization.
The VAR Guy will dig for more perspective during Red Hat Summit.
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Read More About This TopicGraham Taylor and Karsten Gerloff on free software/open source in Europe
Graham Taylor of OpenForum Europe (OFE) and Karsten Gerloff of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) cite standardization policy as the principal battleground for free software & open source communities in Europe. As Taylor observes, “We [OFE] identified that 90% of the public sector had lost their choice about freely choosing the next step [of software procurement], using all proprietary technologies.”
Open source scores in the World Cup
I haven't watched any of the World Cup except for a few highlights on ESPN. I have, however, heard (no pun intended) about the vuvuzela horn. The World Cup is a big deal to football (soccer) fans around the world, but the vuvuzela horn is making quite the buzz.
Some folks seem to be annoyed by the sound and want to watch the game free of the vuvuzela horn noise. Create Digital Music has a solution for you:
How to find a community's cheeseheads when they aren't wearing foam hats
The other day I was chatting with friend and digital strategy/social media expert Ken Burbary on the phone. He was advising a colleague on some good community-building techniques to consider when all of the sudden the following words came out:
"You have to find your cheeseheads."
What? I did a double-take (or at least the conference call equivalent) and asked him to repeat himself.
I had heard him correctly.
A new and better Open Source Initiative
When I said recently that we still need the Open Source Initiative (OSI), it started a flood of comment. There's no doubt that we need OSI - but we need a better OSI. The one we have now is just too small to be effective and too mired in past successes; a renaissance is needed. You can help.
Drug companies to collaborate on Alzheimer's disease
The rising cost of development and research is making drug companies turn to each other for help. Rival companies that include Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Roche plan on sharing clinical data in a standard format. But this isn't the first time we've seen pharmaceutical companies start to share data.