Microsoft/Novell Partnership

Peter P. plpeter2006-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Sat Nov 4 14:40:01 UTC 2006


Simone Richard <simone.richard at ...> writes:

> 
> I'd be interested to know what role IBM's support for open source and
> Linux has had on Microsoft.  Likewise for IBM's support of the Service
> Oriented Architecture, which commoditizes operating systems and
> databases (hello Oracle).

I think that IBM is right at home doing SOA because that is what their
mainframes have been doing all the time. I think that the SOA application to
open source is just a remake of this. And IBM is probably in a postion to do
this right because they have 40 years of statistics and data on such distributed
systems with 'intelligent terminals' (said as an euphemism).

> It might be the case that Microsoft is considering a road map that
> would devalue its OS business (commoditize it) and shift most MS
> resources into SOA-type applications.

I think that MS OSes are at the point where they need to decide how to continue.
This year for the first time the price of a OS license almost equals or exceeds
the price of the hardware required to run it. So the OS may become more
important than the box (but it will still remain second to the data that is kept
on the box in value). With a tightening of anti-piracy measures trying to stem
the damage from pirated software MS cannot afford to have a strong competitor
under-selling it and at the same time outclassing it (Linux) or competing with
it for quality and stability (Lindows/Linspire). So the war is on, and the
Novell partnership may be a foot in the door. Of course if Novell is not careful
it will have things like the OS/2 story or the Xenix story happening to it
before too long (in fact it has already had the SCO story happening to it). One
tends to get stepped on when waltzing with a huge partner, even if the crunch is
unintentional. And I don't think that there is such a thing as 'being too
careful' in this case. Also I think that MS cannot commodize its OS because it
has no alternatives like IBM). 

The current partnership may mean a step in the direction of building that
option. As usual, the SOA is not  a MS idea and they will have to 'reinvent' it
with predictable consequences for reliability and serviceability imho. Also as
usual their first step in 'rebranding' involves a coalition with someone who
already knows how to do the job (Novell was Mr. Networks until not too long ago
imho). The good (?) joke would be if MS would eventually buy out Novell (just
suppose) and become owners of certain Unix patents and trademarks, and of SuSe
Linux at the same time. That would force some interesting decisions wrt. SuSe
Linux kernel imho. Other interesting item: Novell partnered with RIM to
distribute its products before the RIM injunction. As such they probably know
how to weather a legal situation like that of the RIM problem in the US.

Peter


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