Linux looking to dominate Desktop

Linux looking to dominate Desktop

Novell aiming 10 per cent market share for Linux desktops in three to five years

Thursday, May 15, 2008

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Jeffrey Jaffe was a worried man when CyberMedia News caught up with him at Novell's facility in Bhagmane Park, Bangalore.

Dr Jaffe, the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Novell, responsible for the Waltham, Massachusetts-based enterprise infrastructure software and services provider's business units made no efforts to hide his concern.

He started the conversation by narrating how his wife suffered a broken ankle in an accident a few days ago. Dr Jaffe, who also serves as a member of Novell's Worldwide Management Committee, was in a hurry to be back home with his wife.

Yet, he spared a few minutes to meet with Srinivas R of CyberMedia News.

In this meeting, Dr Jaffe shared his vision for Novell's next generation IT infrastructure management architecture – Fossa, named after the animal found in Madagascar known for its agility, the buzzword at Novell.

He also explained the rationale behind Novell's tie-up with Microsoft and his firm's desktop plans for enterprises. Excerpts from the interview:

Novell on one hand promotes open source and on the other, has a tie-up with Microsoft. Was it so critical for Novell to go with Microsoft?

Novell's objective is to meet the customer needs. Some customers have invested in open source and some in proprietary software like Windows. Every CIO has to work with both. Novell thought that the tie-up will help the CIO in managing both the environments.

Have you noticed that this tie-up has made the open source community unhappy?

Open source community is a big community. There are some concerns, but it's moved on. Now the tie-up is more than a year old.

Your financial results shows that you had a growth of over 65 per cent in open source platform business. How has the tie-up with Microsoft helped Novell?

The tie-up with Microsoft has helped us in two ways. First, Microsoft distributes certificate for Novell and the second point is that it helps through sales channel. Apart from this, Novell works closely with many ISVs to provide integrated solutions for our customers. We work closely with SAP due to their endorsement of SUSE Linux Enterprise and our integrated support offer for SAP and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and due to their importance in the marketplace.

With compliance and governance being the frontier of identity management, and with a need for partnerships, it was great to announce with Atos Origin that we would jointly deliver compliance and governance solutions. All these helped us in achieving good numbers.

Still Red Hat has more market share than SUSE. What are you doing to gain more market?

Yes, in numbers, Red Hat has more market share. We are coming out with a desktop strategy: Linux desktop for enterprises. We feel that this will give us an edge over Red Hat.

We are hearing about Linux for desktop for so many years. Still it has not made much inroads. How are you looking at promoting Linux desktops for enterprises?

Microsoft desktop is entrenched. Microsoft is a partner and at the same time is a competitor. I feel, it is a long-term battle. It is a battle we can win.

Is it possible to put a number to it? How many years will it take for Linux to have considerable market share in desktop environment?

Linux and open source is more into server environment. But I also believe customer wants choice. We feel we have enough for the knowledge worker to opt Linux for the desktop. In three to five years, I feel, 10 per cent of market will be using Linux desktops. There are reasons also for this.

You joined Novell couple of years back. What are the changes you brought in so far?

First thing was to bring strong business model among the three groups in Novell. For each product, we created a business unit concept. We asked each product group head to manage it like a business. We brought people from different functions like sales, finance, etc to these business units. We gave more emphasis on quality. This helped us in getting more focus on products and helped us to reach our customers more effectively.

Also businesses are getting transformed because of consolidation. Businesses wanted more agility in addressing the business problem along with the IT problem. We came up with Fossa. If you talk to any CIO today, IT infrastructure is anything but agile. Yet that is what the CIO wants. The CIO wants infinite flexibility to deploy IT resources against business objectives. In a word, that is Novell's vision for the future – the agile infrastructure. This is not exclusively a Novell project – it needs to be an industry project. We need to work with our key hardware, software and distribution partners.

Most important, we need to leverage the participation, innovation, quality, speed and drive of the open source community. The Fossa Project is the next-generation infrastructure that will manage IT with agility and help people and technology work as one.

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