Red Hat Channel VP Keeps His Word (Again)
If you listen closely to Mark Enzweiler, Red Hat’s channel VP for North America, he’ll tell you quite a lot by saying just a little. Enzweiler in March assured The VAR Guy that Red Hat would leap from its dominant Linux server position and land on mainframes and desktops. Those words rang true this week during Red Hat’s customer conference in San Diego.
No, Red Hat didn’t announce any big desktop PC deals. That honor belonged to Ubuntu Linux, which continues to generate buzz for landing on selected Dell desktops and notebooks. Even so, Red Hat did announce a major desktop initiative. And there’s growing speculation that Red Hat Linux will find its way into Google’s smart phone–assuming Google is developing such a device.
Meanwhile, Red Hat also announced a major mainframe initiative with IBM. In terms of pure dollars and cents, the mainframe move won’t likely benefit VARs. But take a closer look, folks. Symbolically, it’s critical for Red Hat to get closer to IBM–because until now, IBM has worked most closely with Novell in the mainframe Linux sector. Red Hat VARs that support IBM’s x86 servers will certainly appreciate the Red Hat-Big Blue combo.
And that gets us back to the original focus of this blog entry: Enzweiler promised action on the desktop and the mainframe. Red Hat took steps in both areas this week. And the net result could be an even stronger presence on x86 servers. Not a bad strategy.