[TriLUG] Novell & Microsoft - sleeping with the enemy

[Shawn William Taylor]

I have been working in technology for 10+ years and have never received a 
cold call from a company that is trying to generate its revenue by 
marketing or selling Open Source technologies.
I don't think the failure is with the technology piece, I think it's in 
the sales and marketing piece. Most people (From what I can gather by 
being a pretty green linux user and observer) on this list are either 
using open source or contributing to open source (or both). However, I 
don't see a lot of people marketing those solutions or actively selling 
those solutions.

The reason the manager in Jim's example will buy the name brand recognized 
solution is the same reason we all make our everyday buying decisions. 
Either:

1> We have used the product and continue to buy it.
2> We trust someone enough to value their opinion about the product as a 
referral.
3> We have a relationship with an existing brand that adds the product to 
their portfolio.

Companies selling Open Source technology need to be more aggressive about 
getting that piece of their operation functioning and it's not an easy 
task. Especially for a small company that doesn't have large marketing 
budgets.

Shawn

Jim Towers Wrote:

  I believe Novell thinks SUSE is netware and will try to sell it the same
way. Maybe in their mind they are not providing Linux but are selling 
SUSE.
I guess this is probably a good business strategy for them.  "Linux" costs
more but not "SUSE". E.g.
novell salesman: "You're not thinking of using that Linux distro are you?"
bank VP: "Oh no, we need reliability."
techie (former microserf): "Send me to SUSE training. I like GUI's."
softie: "But don't forget you need the Windows OS for Sharepoint and other
stone soups." Heck, why not port those stone soups to Linux? As long as 
they
have GUI's and the big name then some manager will buy them even if
mediawiki, tikiwiki, egroupware, zope, joomla!+docman etc are free.

My $.02,
TimJowers