R.
Krause
-
July
7, 2000
Event
Summary
Dell and Red Hat Inc. announced the One Source Alliance to accelerate
commercial adoption of the Linux operating system and to support businesses
building Internet infrastructures. Linux is now one of three strategic
operating systems Dell factory installs and supports globally, along with
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows and Novell Inc.'s NetWare.
Red
Hat and Dell offer customers a "pure play" for Linux development and deployment
as demand for the open source operating system increases. Unlike many
manufacturers, Dell does not have a proprietary, in-house UNIX offering
that competes for resources. This agreement allows Dell to align its efforts
with Red Hat to deliver best-in-class Linux solutions to its customers
and outlines a tightly integrated package of joint development programs,
global services and marketing initiatives.
Dell
and Red Hat will expand their direct engineering relationship to address
the immediate high-volume business opportunity in the Internet infrastructure
buildout. Red Hat and Dell also will focus on future core operating system
developments in the areas of reliability and availability, including clustering,
to support the maturation of Linux. A key aspect of their development
activities is next-generation open source systems based on Intel's IA-64
platform.
An
example of early development efforts between the two companies is the
Red Hat Linux stack in Dell's new PowerApp.web appliance servers, announced
in April of this year. Engineers from Red Hat and Dell worked together
to create an optimized version of Red Hat Linux for the new appliance
web servers. Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc. is one of the first companies
to deploy PowerApp.web appliance servers, at approximately 1,400 dealerships
in the United States.
Both
Dell and Red Hat have also committed to running each other's systems internally,
thereby benefiting from the One Source Alliance in a work environment
on a daily basis. Red Hat will use Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision
workstations as its primary development and certification platforms and
Dell uses Red Hat Linux in certain areas of its IT manufacturing operations.
New features for Red Hat Linux will be tested on Dell equipment and then
submitted back to the open source community for further validation and
testing. The co-development and testing is expected to provide Dell a
time-to-market advantage in offering the latest versions of Red Hat Linux
to customers.
Dell
and Red Hat will create special Linux service and support offerings to
meet the extensive needs of commercial customers. Red Hat will be Dell's
preferred Linux services provider worldwide.
Market
Impact
This is another boost for Linux in general and Red Hat in particular.
Having "most favored nation" status with Dell, combined with the likely
market volumes for Dell's PowerApp server appliances, should help Red
Hat extend its dominance of the Linux market. However, the special "tuning"
that Red Hat will do for the Dell hardware is not necessarily good for
the Linux movement - the market's OS fragmentation concern gains credence
when the market leader creates a "special" distribution. Even with this
concern, we expect this announcement will help Linux continue to increase
its server volume market share (est. 25% in 1999). With Linux pre-loaded
on the fastest growing segment of the server market - server appliances
- by the #2 vendor in the Intel server market, we expect the growth rate
to be greater than would otherwise happen.
Dell
benefits from the increased visibility of its Linux offerings. IBM is
catching up to Dell in its overall Linux offerings, owing to its breadth
of platforms on which it will support Linux. However, we believe Dell
is maintaining a slight edge in mindshare, due to the early lead it built
up from direct ordering and factory pre-loading of Linux on its various
systems.
User
Recommendations
Hardcore Windows users will find no value in this announcement, but we
do not see any real downside for the rest of the world willing to consider
Linux. The Linux market leader combined with one of the strongest Intel
server manufacturers to deliver packaged solutions is a strong message,
and we see only modest risk. Risk, in this case, takes the form of the
potential dearth of applications and drivers for Linux. However, the Linux
community has been trying hard to catch up, and soon this negative-sell
will be obviated.
The
services/support agreement will also serve to lessen uncertainty for customers
planning to add Linux to their in-house operating systems.
Demystifying SAP Solution Manager | Mobile Supply Chain Management: The Dream Is Becoming a Reality | I Want My Private Cloud | Software Selection for Organizations: Are We Becoming Too Web-biased? | Program Testing Methodology
Part One: Preparing for Testing | Whose ROI is it Anyway?
Part One: Introduction | Justification of ERP Investments
Part Three: Costs of Implementing an ERP System | InsideOut Firewall Reporter Unravels the Mysteries of Your Firewall Logs | Top 10 Reasons For Having A Project Kickoff - Part II | Top 10 Reasons For Having A Project Kickoff - Part I | Vendor Analysis: Kaspersky Anti-Virus Products Examined | What’s All This Benchmark Stuff, Anyway? | Identix Leads Biometric Authentication | Are ASP Applications Right for You? Part 2: Decision Criteria | Are ASP Applications Right for You?
Part 1: Decision Factors |
SCT Corporation Means (e)Business For Process Manufacturing | Evolutionary Technologies Does EAI (Always Did, We Just Didn’t Call It That) | AMD Hooks Up with Transmeta – For Now | Red Hat Plays 'Love You, Love You Not' with CPUs | Dell Sharpens Its Linux Focus | Prophet 21 First Quarter Revenues Suffer But Pipeline Grows | Palm to Give Developers a Leg Up | Gates Previews Pen-Based Computer | Quantum Snaps Off Its NAS Group | eMachines to Ship Appliance | What’s in a Name? | Technology Hardware Maintenance-Acquiring and Managing Cost Effective Service | frontpath Announces Mobile Internet Appliance | Commerce One: First SAP, then Microsoft. But What About Clarus? | Transmeta to Intel/AMD: Eat Our Dust | Ariba Holds Announcement Festival | Sun Buys Cobalt | VA Linux Releases NAS Server | How Do You Categorize Notebooks? | IMI Sees Red In Dawn Of Fiscal 2001 | Turmoil in CPU-Land | Red Hat’s Linux Domination Weakens | GNOME Will Try to Buff Up Linux | New Internet Appliances Coming from Compaq | How Do You Categorize Servers? | Compaq to Offer Co-Branded iPAQ BlackBerry Wireless E-mail Solution | Compaq Wins Supercomputer Contract, But Is It Enough? | PC Market Figures Show Compaq, Dell, and HP Lead | Computer Manufacturers Shifting Their Focus to Start-Ups | Rackmount Server Sales Surge | Manhattan Associates Completes Second Quarter On Record Pace | Red Hat Releases Clustering Software | Windows 2000 Bug Fixes Posted | Compaq and IBM Alliance for Storage | Should It Be Renamed 'Unobtainium'? | Dell Drops WebPC | 21st Century Fox Hunt - US vs. Microsoft | Lynx to Donate Advanced Messaging to Linux Open-Source Community | Netpliance’s 4X Price Hike - Will It Spell Boom or Doom? | HP’s LT 6000r Six-CPU Server | Handspring’s Visor Passes Pocket PC | Active Voice Adds Unified Messaging to Cisco’s CallManager | NetWare for Small Business – NetWhy? | New Storage Array from Sun | Compaq to Open Tru64 Unix? | Intraware Acquires Janus for its Extranets | Lucent Receives Engineering Award in Unified Messaging | Technology Project Selection and Management in Community Banks | At Least It Hasn’t Been Renamed Linux 2001 | Intel 820 Chipset Delays Again, Again, Again… | Cobalt Releases Linux "Clustering" Software | It Takes More Than a Fast CPU to Rule the Web | Compaq’s 'Photon' Comes into the Light | Caldera eDesktop Edges Out Microsoft Windows 2000 in Functionality – Part II | IA-64 Linux From Red Hat | Gateway & AOL Follow Crusoe’s Footprints | Bezos to McNealy: Drop Dead! | IBM Loads Linux on Mainframes | MicronPC.com, or, “Where Are They Now?” | Mirapoint Adds Web-Mail Client to Messaging Appliance Line | Network Appliance to Ship Sub-$10K Caching Hardware | Compaq Reorganizes Again | Dell Tops in Customer Satisfaction | Intel Faces 820 Chipset Problems (Again) | Intel Small Server Market | eBay Looking For Sun Block? | HP “Medals” In U.S. PC Olympics | AMD Server Plans De-Railed | Net Woes for NetWare | Intel Reorganization | It’s a Portal...AND It;s a Gateway | Cooler-running Notebooks from HP, Toshiba, et al. | Netpliance Responds Quickly to Hardware Hack | Intel Server Trends | AMD Earnings Beat the Street! Intel Earnings Beat the Street? | Desktop PCs: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss… (Dell) | HP e-Vectra Product Follow-up | Dell Updates Its Appliance Line | Apple Displays Its Core in Mac OS X | U.S. vs. Microsoft: Another Day of Reckoning | Why Would Anyone Need More Than 50 IP Addresses? | Will Intel Take a Loss on Each CPU, but Make It Up in Volume? | “Whistler” Beta on the Web? | HP Reorganizes Storage Group, Addresses NAS-cent Market | HP: Why Not Just Call It “e-Vectra.com”? | Compaq Streamlines Product Line | Will MS try the "Open Source" Gambit with WinCE? Why Not – Nothing Else Seems to Work | “It’s a Notebook!” “It’s a Paperweight!” “Wait - It’s Both!” | Cisco: IPv6 is Coming, Eventually | Gosh, There’s a Bug in Windows 98 | Wintel Tries to “Embrace and Extend” the English Language | Information/Internet Appliances | Hewlett-Packard’s NetServer Division – #3 to Get Ready, or #4 to Go? | Palm IPO: 3Com’s morning after, or “Do you know the way to San Jose?” | Does Microsoft Have Something Against 64-Bit Processors? | Acta Technology Helps Add Business Intelligence Capabilities to Major ERP Vendors | Bus-Tech Speeds up Mainframe DB2 Access | Total Uptime Guarantees? It Must Be A New Millennium! | Analysis of Novell's Announced Support for Sun's Solaris 8 Operating Environment | Tentative Unification in Server I/O Architecture Battle | Dell Unveils Internet-Enabled Customer Support Strategy | Compaq, Dell Announce Eight-Way Intel Servers | Dell Takes Over the #1 Spot in the U.S. PC Market | Dell to Acquire ConvergeNet International | Microsoft to Purchase Softway Systems | Gateway Drops AMD | Intel Delays Shipment of 820 Chipset | Flaw in Intel Xeon 550 Chips: Shipments Stopped | Sun to Make Solaris Source Code Available | Palm Tries to Take the Desktop in Hand | MainWin for Linux - NT Apps without NT | TurboLinux Clusters One More Step Taken | Cisco Tries to Cache In By Buying Software Start-Up Tasmania Networks | Intel Throws its "Red Hat" into Linux Ring | NEC Pulls Packard Bell PCs in US | Corel and PC Chips to Accelerate Mass Desktop Deployment of Linux | Gateway, Dell Plan Windows-free Appliances | Here Come the "Information Appliances" | Sony Picks Palm OS | Intel Invests in eSoft - "Lintel" Continues to Grow | AMD Athlon Debuts | EMC to Buy Data General | Compaq to Halt NT on Alpha Development | eMachines Considering Internet Appliance | Sun to "Community Source" Almost Everything | eMachines to Buy FreePC | Dell Jumps Into Internet PC Arena | Be Announces Software Licensing Agreement With Compaq | Acer to Jump on Internet Appliance Bandwagon | Sun's StarPortal Opens Its Gates Early | OS SmackDown! | What If They Shipped an OS and Nobody Came? | Presarios Freezing - and Not Because it's Winter | Intel's "New Best Friend" for Web Appliances is Linux | Compaq Buys a Chunk of Inacom - But Will It Help? | Gateway, Jilted by Intel, Kisses and Makes Up with AMD | Be to Be FreeB(i)e | HP Joins the Athlon Pile-On | Will Sun Burn Linux with "Free" Solaris? | HP says "When in Doubt, Buy It Out" for Server Appliances | Intel Chip Shortage Continuing | Embedded Linux for Handhelds | Linux Laptops from Dell | Come See the Softer Side of Linux? | Windows 2000: Paragon for Partisans, Skewered by Skeptics | Compaq Plans Direct Sales. DTja vu All Over Again? | Goodbye PCs, Hello Appliances? | Intel Tries to Give it Away - AMD Says "No Way" | Microsoft says: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Glasses | U.S. vs. Microsoft - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, But Not That Hard | Linux at 25% of Server OS Market - Is Redmond Hearing Footsteps? | Dell Uses its Muscle to Beat Side-Effects of Taiwan Quake | IBM to Make Cuts in PC Business Real Change, or Just Buying Time? | Micron to Push "Subscriber Computing" Rentals 'R' Us? | Compaq Partners with Red Hat in Linux Support Deal | Bristol Technology Ships Win-to-Lin Migration Tool | Compaq and Samsung in Deal to Save Alpha | Gateway Announces Server Appliances | Dell to Factory-Install Red Hat Linux on Servers | Windows 2000 Releases to Manufacturing - Finally | Catalyst International Ties Fate to SAP | Geac Computer Corporation: Mastering Growth by Acquisitions | Dell's High-End Rackmount Servers - Challenging Compaq's Wintel Dominance | Compaq's High-End Wintel-based Rack Servers - Working Hard to Stay #1 | Compaq's Alpha - Moving Toward Its Omega? | High-End Wintel-Based Rackmount Servers - The Big Get Bigger | IBM's Four-CPU Wintel-Based Rack Servers High Performance, High Cost | HP's Four-CPU Wintel-Based Rack Servers: Focusing on Reliability and Expandability | Dell's 8-CPU Intel Servers Increasing Its Enterprise Focus | Compaq's 8-CPU Intel Servers: the New "Big Iron" | Network Engines, Inc. - Double the CPUs for Web Serving | #2 Dell Tries Harder, Compaq Hurts | Server Appliances - "Caching" In on Internet's Growth |