Red Hat vs. Novell: Winner Take All
When Red Hat announces quarterly results on June 28, the news may confirm what solutions providers already know: Red Hat Linux is easily outselling Novell SuSE Linux in the market place.
Novell is quick to note that the North American Linux market is a two-horse race. But industry sources tell me Red Hat commands more than 80 percent of North American Linux sales, compared to less than 20 percent for Novell.
There’s still time for Novell to get back in the race. Novell’s lastest SuSE Linux release is winning solid reviews, but the company needs to make more noise in the market place. My advice: Spend more co-marketing dollars with AMD, promoting SuSE on fast-selling Opteron servers. Next, make a strategic investment in MySQL, the prominent open-source database. And spend the next three months visiting every Red Hat partner listed on the company’s Web site.
Novell disappointed investors and partners when it announced weak quarterly results in May. It’s time for CEO Jack Messman to take aggressive action. If he hasn’t received a wake-up call yet, it will surely come when Red Hat delivers quarterly results June 28.