Novell: Linux is our future
Published: 13 Aug 2003 13:30 BST
Are you going to continue to maintain four -- three and a half -- collaboration clients (GroupWise, NetMail, Evolution and Web-based front-end Virtual Office)?
They go after different audiences. So you have the GroupWise client, which is proprietary and runs on Windows. That will always be there because there is nothing replacing that. Then there is Evolution, which is a Linux-based client. It is an Outlook clone. You can connect that to a GroupWise back-end server. Then you have an opportunity for GroupWise to run on Linux.
From a developer standpoint, it seems it will be hard to maintain that many applications.
That's the trick for us to figure out.
What about the technologies lower down the application stack, such as Mono?
Mono is great. I like the idea very much of being able to run .Net applications on Linux and recompiling things written in C# to run on Linux. We will become a big advocate for Mono. I hope Microsoft views it as a good thing. The more .Net applications available to run on Linux should be a good thing for Microsoft. We have some services that we have been building in the security and identity and authentication space, which would be terrific additions to Mono.
And how are ZenWorks and Red Carpet going to fit together?
Again, a natural fit. ZenWorks, which is mainly a NetWare and Windows desktop management product, will now be completely augmented with Red Carpet, which is dedicated to Linux patch management and software distribution. We will blend the two together. It has only been three days now, so we don't have all the integration issues solved, but taking those two products and putting them together for both NetWare and Linux fills a huge void.
Is the decision to add Linux a complementary move or a migration move?
It comes down to the ability to be binary and to be cross-platform, if you will, to be able to develop our services on NetWare. They already exist there so take those and put them on Linux to eventually have a single user interface and management system.
But Linux is something new for Novell?
It's actually not all that new. We have been working on Linux for quite some time. It just wasn't exposed.
Well, Linux wasn't mentioned in any of your financial statements before the most recent one in June.
It was never anything that we went public with. We have been using it internally....We have decided strategically that's an area that we can impact and it's an area that our customers have been asking us to move into. They have also been asking us to provide interoperability between both environments. NetWare lives on, and there is no desire or plan to stop development. We have already stated we are shipping NetWare 6.5 right now and then there's 7.0. And it's the customer that decides what platform they want to run the service on.
It seems NetWare 7.0 is mainly going to be moving all these services to both Linux and the NetWare OS. So, you are basically able to give the customer some choice.
That's exactly what it is. Let the customer decide what they want to run it on. That's the opportunity that is lacking on Linux.
So you think that when faced with the choice customers will say, "You know, I want to run that on NetWare?"
They might. That's the beauty of it.
But what's the likelihood? It seems that you are moving this way because your customers are demanding Linux, not the NetWare OS.
Well, we are. We are moving that way because they say they want Linux. We get a choice to protect the economic model. If they say they are going to Linux and putting these services on Linux...that's good, that's terrific, so I can go there when I need to -- so I will stay with NetWare for a little longer.
So it's showing people a path forward, that they don't make a choice to leave NetWare now.
Exactly, so you win both ways. What's wrong with that? I think we are saying the same thing.
But it seems you are saying that customers are looking toward NetWare services and applications running on Linux. When you offer people the ability to run on both NetWare and Linux in NetWare 7.0, how many do you think will choose the NetWare side?
Oh, I'm not going to tell you that but the benefit that Novell gets out of it is that they are both coming from Novell. Either way we have a customer base that stays with us. That's the trick in the age of software: keeping your customer base. So maintain your base, add value to it with NetWare. Go for the new base, make it interoperable with the existing one with Linux -- I don't think you can get a better strategy out of this. There is nobody else doing it this way. Microsoft's not going to do this. Sun's not doing it.
When the Linux kernel 2.6 comes out, are you going to back port to the NetWare kernel? If IBM comes out with a cool new feature for Linux, will you put that into the NetWare kernel?
That's a good question -- and that's a question that we will deal with when it hits. I don't want to go there right now. Those are the things you have to deal with, not just with new (kernel features), but anything up and down the stack. And how much of that you go back and put onto NetWare. And that depends on the demand for the functionality and demand of the service among the customer base.
It sounds like when Linux goes to 2.6, it's going to have features that are not available on the NetWare side.
That's right.
Wouldn't that make it a more compelling solution for your customers?
Again, that's up to them. That's exactly right. That's up to them. But we want to give them that choice.
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