Virtualization Showdown: VMware and Novell Counter Red Hat
Call it a preemptive strike. When Red Hat Summit kicks off June 22, the open source company is expected to strongly promote Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) to partners and customers. Instead of sitting back on its heels, Linux rival Novell is building a stronger virtualization partnership with VMware. In short, Novell and VMware are ganging up against Red Hat. Here are the details.
As part of an expanded relationship launched today, VMware will distribute and support Novell‘s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Under the agreement, VMware will standardize its virtual appliance-based products on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, VMware added. Meanwhile, Novell continues to hedge its virtualization bets through an ongoing virtualization relationship with Microsoft, and a separate relationship with Citrix Systems.
Translation: Novell is using a surround-and-conquer strategy to compete against RHEV, which is still a fledgling virtualization option.
Read Between the Lines
There are some juicy subplots to this story. The Novell-VMware move arrives as:
- Red Hat strives to bolster RHEV (an emerging virtualization option) and upstart Canonical promotes virtualization for Ubuntu Linux. In fact, RHEV is expected to be a core theme at Red Hat Summit, scheduled for June 22-25 in Boston.
- Novell continues to promote Intelligent Workload Management as a way to manage physical and virtual applications both on-premises and in the cloud. Virtualization and software appliances are core to the IWM strategy. Having VMware in Novell’s corner could give the IWM strategy a lift.
- Novell considers potential buyout offers from an apparent range of bidders. A closer working relationship with VMware could give Novell a potential lift during potential takeover talks.
- Clearly, VMware wants to counter Red Hat as well. Canonical Chief Operating Officer Matt Asay shed some light on the Red Hat vs. VMware war in a recent blog post.
The VAR Guy expects more fireworks during the Red Hat Summit in Boston. In the meantime, our resident blogger will be checking in with VARs to see which virtualization horse they’re betting on.
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VAR Guy, your readers might be interested to read Microsoft’s take on the Novell/VMware news. http://ow.ly/1Wvm0.
Patrick: The VAR Guy rather enjoyed that link. Thanks for sharing it. Seems like coopetition is alive and well in the software market. Even as MSFT partners with NOVL on virtualization, MSFT pokes some fun at the NOVL-VMware relationship. Interesting, to say the least.
-TVG
I’ve had production servers running in KVM (RHEV) for over a year and have had 0 problems.
Thanks for the blog post.
Novell’s longstanding strategy on virtualization and hypervisor support is to offer customers maximum choice and flexibility. The reality is, most customers have a mixed environment and they’re looking for solutions that work across all of their existing IT investments. We’ve worked hard with all the major vendors to make sure that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is optimized as the “best guest” OS no matter what hypervisor is being used.
That said, the partnership with VMware is absolutely unique in the industry in that VMware is OEMing SLES so they can deliver and support it along with shipments of their flagship vSphere product. Further, they’re standardizing on SLES for all their virtual appliances. This is a tremendous endorsement of Novell and of our technology. VMware selected Novell and SLES because, among other things, we offer more than 5,000 certified applications, more than double that of Red Hat. Again, an example of offering customers choice.
As you point out, this market-moving partnership gives Novell a very significant advantage is the fast growing virtualization market.
Ian Bruce/Novell
Gerry@3: Please keep The VAR Guy posted on your progress. Are you a solutions provider or IT manager?
Ian@4: Thanks for the deeper NOVL insights. The VAR Guy isn’t playing favorites in the virtualization market. But it’s hard to ignore VMware’s decision to partner up with Novell… especially in the appliance area.
-TVG