Fax and NAS and Novell

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 05/05/06

Although there are plenty of online fax services, and plenty of online collaboration sites, for some odd reason the collaboration sites don't offer fax services. I thought when I started investigating the fax services they would be a nice feature on the collaboration sites. I didn't remember seeing fax services listed on the collaboration sites when I played with some of those, but I figured my low fax mindshare just missed seeing the fax button. Yet going back and looking, I can't find any obvious fax features on the collaboration sites. Maybe I should become a deal broker, or maybe the fax and collaboration people will tell me why they haven't partnered up.

I've been reviewing NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices for an upcoming print review in Network World, and so they are even higher on my radar than usual. That's why this ComputerWorld story called Storage Goes Wi-Fi With Iomega NAS caught my attention. Not only does the Iomega box have both Gigabit Ethernet and wireless support, it's got 1TB (one terabyte) of disk storage inside, and a retail price of $899 outside. Iomega hit a new high in features and new low in pricing for the small business NAS appliance market.

Reader Tim W sent me a nice note defending Novell by reporting what he saw at LinuxWorld. Many of the SuSE (the German Linux company Novell bought last year) employees have bailed or been pushed out, as is normal in buyouts. Yet the upcoming version of their desktop Linux software looks stunning with 3D graphics and more (and will beat Microsoft Vista to the market by months).

Tim believes Novell's decision to change the name back to SuSE Desktop Linux is a good marketing move, but I disagree. While Novell didn't make any headway with Novell Linux Desktop 9, I believe they'll make even less with SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED 10). Novell still has name recognition in the US, or at least more than a mid-tier German Linux company with an odd name (SuSE) and odder mascot (I think it was a chameleon, but I could never really tell). When most people mispronounce SuSE (soos-uh) as Suzie, getting "Suzie on the desktop" sounds too much like a $9.95 per month porn service you don't want your wife to find out about. Or maybe that's the idea, and Novell's embracing guerilla marketing with a sexy twist.

What's not sexy is Novell's fanfare for mobile service connections between GroupWise and about 400 portable PDAs and smart phones. Yes, that's a wonderful feature to add. Yes, the addition is about four years too late. When chasing the market leader (Microsoft Exchange) from distant third place, you must have features before the market leader to get new customers. But the good news is that the three companies who don't have Exchange or Blackberry service now have a reason to buy Novell. I bet Novell's stock price, with this announcement, will rebound about as high as an anvil.

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Comments

James took some liberties with my comments about Novell and the forthcoming re-branded SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 (formerly Novell Linux Desktop 9).

First, Novell is putting the SUSE name back where it belongs. So instead of Novell Linux Desktop 9 (powered by SUSE) the product will be SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Novell does not have a separate Linux distro. It only has the SUSE Linux distro. This was a smart thing to do.

As for the pronunciation of SUSE, I think a reasonably aware person has figured that one out. Anyone who calls SUSE "suzie" just hasn't been listening for the past serveral years.

Most of the SUSE execs who came to Novell after Novell bought SUSE have left. I suspect they all left with plenty of money too since Novell paid approx. $245 million for SUSE.

I would hardly classify SUSE as a "mid-tier German Linux company". SUSE was one of the fist companies with a commercial Linux distro back in 1993. Today, most corporations will only consider two Linux distros for their data centers...one is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL4) and the other is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES9).

While Red Hat is readily recognized in the U.S. SUSE is widely recognized in Europe. Novell is changing that by marketing SUSE more strongly in the U.S. and by creating the openSUSE.org project.

The anticipated release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED10) in September is going to turn a lot of heads. People who haven't had a compelling reason to put Linux on their desktops are going to find SLED 10 impressive.

Posted by: Tim Wessels on May 13, 2006 09:49 AM