Monthly Archive for January, 2005

Why IBM won't certify products for x86 Solaris 10

January 28, 2005

Sun is mad at IBM. Sun’s President and COO Jonathan Schwartz even wrote an angry letter to our CEO Sam Palmisano last Friday. Understandably. This eWeek report from the 17th of January states that IBM’s refused to “test, certify and support its enterprise software applications on Solaris 10 for x86 platforms”. Which is strange, considering that IBM’s fully agreed to do the exact same thing for Solaris 10 on SPARC.

The ostensible reason from IBM is that they don’t anticipate customer demand for Solaris 10 on x86. An IBM spokesperson said that if and when Solaris 10 on x86 reaches “the required level of customer interest”, they’ll “review the matter”.

The argument does sound a little specious. If IBM begins this process of testing and certification only when customer demand does hot up, it might be a case of too late. Especially if other vendors can competing products, all certified. And IBM has time on its hands: Solaris 10 for both platforms will be available only in March, so there’s time for the certification process.

So, being the conspiracy theorists we are, let’s try to analyse the real reason behind IBM’s stubborn refusal. According to most analysts, IBM wants to thwart Solaris on x86 entirely. Solaris is an OS that directly competes with IBM’s AIX and Linux OSes. AIX currently runs only on the POWER platform, but IBM offers Linux on its entire range of Intel-based xSeries servers. With Solaris on x86, IBM loses an opportunity to offer a Linux-and-xSeries bundle, especially with the hype that Sun’s successfully built around Solaris 10. Novell might also figure in the calculations, now that IBM’s pumped in USD 50 million into the company to enable it to buy SUSE. IBM provides Enterprise Linux flavours from Novell and RedHat on its servers.

Also, IBM’d like nothing better than to replace a Solaris-on-x86 configuration with an AIX-on-POWER 5 one, for high-end systems. One pitch it could make to customers is that a complete IBM solution might be cheaper and easier to support than a bits-and-pieces Sun-and-IBM one. Indeed, according to the article, Scott McNealy was told by IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano that “IBM no longer has to support an environment that includes Sun, even if it is one that is best for the customer.”

IBM has the advantage of being able to offer a wide product range, whereas Sun still remains very much a platform provider. IBM can use its middleware applications muscle to promote its platform further, and vice versa.

Update on Novell's Internal Linux Move

January 28, 2005

Two days ago, I’d wondered about Novell’s Internal Linux Move, on the sidelines of an article about such an announcement by IBM. In an interview with ZDNet UK, Novell’s MD in the UK told readers to watch out for announcements on that front at Novell’s Brainshare 2004 Convention in March last year.

Today, I hit pay dirt. Here’s an April 2004 interview with Novell’s CIO, Debra Anderson, (interestingly enough, also by ZDNet UK), which focusses almost entirely on this internal migration. Debra admits that a significant motivation for the migration was perception – Novell wanted to be seen as “eating its own dog food” – something that Microsoft is very proud of. Also, the migration strategy seemed to be to first use OpenOffice across the organisation – on Windows – and only later migrate fully to Linux. Novell also won’t be upgrading any Windows desktops they already have:

How is it working out winding up the Microsoft licences you do have – are they making that an easy thing for you to do?

It’s interesting you ask that — we just concluded our licences in March. That was our annual contract with Microsoft and we terminated the Microsoft OS and Office enterprise licence.

That was across the entire organisation?

What that means is that for all the OSes I have, I do not have upgrade rights. Now I still have perpetual use for the set number of Microsoft Office clients I purchased

I also stumbled upon a couple of March 2004 articles from Brainshare 2004 on – where else – ZDNet UK! Here’s an interview with Jack Messman himself ( Novell’s chief executive and chairman, for those not in the know). Jack also was in a particularly bombastic mood, declaring “We don’t need no stinkin’ Windows“! Remember, all of this was at Brainshare 2004, held at Salt Lake City between March 21-25 2004. It’s been over three quarters of a year since then. If Novell had indeed made significant progress on their promises, we’d be hearing from them a lot more than the stony silence we’re getting on this issue.

If IBM and Novell, the current flagbearers for Linux in the Enterprise, have both faltered on their own Linux migrations, they’re going to find it very hard to convince customers to do the same, either on the desktop or in the datacentre. There had better be some soundbites at Brainshare 2005 – March 20-25 2005.

Microsoft makes a big show of inviting customers to their Redmond campus to show off their internal usage of the latest in their product line. Gates devoted a large chunk of an entire chapter in his landmark “Business @ The Speed Of Thought” to this claim. Paul Thurrot, professional apologist for Microsoft, often touches upon this in his reports on his website. (Hey, to be fair, I admire his zealousness, and I recommend his website to all Windows enthusiasts!) It’s time IBM and Novell woke up to the need to not only do the Right Thing, but also to be seen doing so.