Linux train late – but still coming

Avnet Partner Solutions has just signed up, in February, with Novell to distribute SuSE Linux software. Colin McKenna, managing director for the company in Australia, says it’s too soon to tell how good the results will be.

For Avnet, SuSE Linux dovetails nicely with the offerings of major Avnet partner vendors such as IBM and HP. Novell’s excellent reputation, McKenna says, was another crucial factor in the decision to take SuSE Linux on board. "We see the relationship with Novell as long term being very [productive] in the corporate market," he says.

The product itself may matter less, McKenna suggests, than whether there is a market and a strong vendor with whom to partner. Novell has a great corporate image, he says.

"Our job is not really to create markets, more to create channels. The market is created by the vendors," he says. "Our take is that Linux is strategic. It is growing."

Linux will appeal to Avnet’s large Unix partner base and also to its high-end Windows ISVs who want a Linux offering as well, McKenna says.

Novell has opened a Linux certification and testing centre in Australia as part of the deal. Some 500 Australasian ISVs will be able to use the centre to polish up their SuSE skills, he says. "It’s early days yet, but we’re feeling pretty bullish about [Novell and SuSE]. We think it’s going to be a good value-add," McKenna says. "We’re obviously not looking just to sell Linux solutions but the infrastructure with it."

Sandeep Chandiramani, partner and alliances director at Red Hat, says the vendor, whose channel program here is still quite young, has about a dozen Australian business partners and one hosting partner, Macquarie Corporate Telecommunications.

"In the hosting market, we’re for companies that can’t afford to have their own systems," he says. "That also works for enterprises that require a very high level of security."

Chandiramani says OEM is seeing a lot of growth. Individually, partners such as BlueConnections in Victoria and local government specialist Civica have already been quite successful. "Our bookings in Australia are growing 100 percent year-on-year, although that does not translate into the same amount of revenue growth because of our subscription revenue model," he says.

Striking while the market is young helps partners dig in as that market begins to take off, Chandiramani points out.

Desktop use is still at the early adopter stage, but server deployment is still growing strongly for the vendor. Red Hat has a couple of desktop-related projects cooking with channel partners just at the evaluation stage, he says.

"At this stage, we can’t disclose much but what we are seeing is it’s going quite strongly because we have a channel partner who is actually focused on migrations," he says. Red Hat and Windows compete primarily in the enterprise space. Previously, customers have been keen on Linux for its perceived Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits, but the assumption Linux is cheaper has become more controversial over time -- a fact to which Chandiramani readily assents.

Security and manageability may be the real gains in going Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 has come out with some serious security enhancements assessed by the National Security Agency in the US that make Linux more secure and stable.

"Those things have made customers stick with Linux and invest more on open source solutions from Red Hat," he says.