Red Hat

What we'll pay for on the Web

Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be managed.

We live in the midst of a digital cornucopia that our brains simply cannot manage without help. Whether it's our 150 Facebook-friend limit or our ability to find and store iTunes songs, we need help processing the sheer abundance of digital goods.

Importantly, we're generally willing to pay for this help.

Sure, most of us will take something for free if we can. Just ask the music industry, which has been battered by peer-to-peer piracy.

But not all of us. And not all of the time. … Read more

Is Linux too hard?

Despite booming enterprise server sales, some in the industry continue to grumble that Linux is too hard. Designed by geeks for geeks, the theory goes, Linux will never be mainstream.

Reality hasn't been kind to such arguments.

Consider the fact that Linux-based Google Android saw 350 percent growth in 2009, according to Myxer data. I've yet to hear anyone talking about Android being hard to use. My teenage neighbors bought their Android phones and have had little trouble texting, browsing the Web, and installing applications.

It's Linux. It's not hard.

Where Linux does sometimes fall down … Read more

Novell slapped for impersonating Red Hat

It's no secret that Novell would dearly love to trade market share with Red Hat in the Linux market. Red Hat, however, isn't happy with at least one of Novell's chosen strategies for getting there:

Cloning.

As its white papers allege, Novell thinks it can offer high-quality support for SUSE Linux, the Linux distribution it owns and ships, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the Linux distribution that it...doesn't. The company has been offering a migration plan from RHEL to SUSE since at least November 2008, but it recently raised the ire of Red Hat … Read more

Reports: Tech recovery driven by developing nations, cloud

Analysts may differ on the strength of the technology spending recovery, but they're increasingly in sync on believing that 2010 will see a healthy rise.

Both Forrester Research and Goldman Sachs recently updated their projections on technology spending in 2010, and both see global spending on the upswing: Forrester projects 8.1 percent growth while Goldman Sachs's new "Mapping 2010: Key Tech Trends to Watch" report forecasts a more conservative 5 percent growth.

It's fair to say, however, that technology vendors will be happy with either outcome, especially as the U.S. continues to shed jobs.… Read more

Open source became big business in 2009

Open source has long been an important development methodology. The biggest surprise of 2009, however, was just how quickly it took center stage as a business strategy in the larger software economy.

The reason? Google.

It's not as if open source as a business strategy is anything new. After all, the industry has been chattering about the business benefits of open source for nearly 10 years.

But not on Google scale. And not with the cachet and brand of Google blessing the idea. Despite the impressive sales and profits that Red Hat and other traditional open-source companies consistently deliver, … Read more

Red Hat's Q3 earnings defy gravity

Someone needs to let the folks in Raleigh know we're in a down economy still. While much of the tech market lingers in the doldrums, Red Hat announced another strong earnings report for its fiscal third quarter 2010.

Here are some of the headline numbers:

Revenue of $194 million, an 18 percent increase year-over-year. Subscription revenue topped $164 million, up 21 percent year-over-year (and 85 percent of the company's revenue). Deferred revenue climbed 23 percent year-over-year to hit $619 million. All 25 accounts up for renewal in the quarter renewed, and at 120 percent of value.

Small wonder, … Read more

Canonical's opportunity to simplify Ubuntu

Ubuntu has led the Linux community's efforts to improve on form, not simply function, and thereby make the Linux experience as good or better than Mac OS X in terms of usability. Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical, the company set up to shepherd development and commercialization of Ubuntu, is the heart of that effort.

As announced on Thursday, however, Shuttleworth is resigning as Canonical CEO to focus on improving the Ubuntu user experience:

From March next year, I'll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most … Read more

Third phase of open source: customer participation

BUENOS AIRES--Open source has successfully navigated its first two phases of development and adoption. We're now entering the third, and possibly final, phase: the time when consumers of open-source software also become producers.

Can enterprise IT make the leap?

Billions of dollars in IT investment are at stake. Perhaps even more importantly, billions of lines of code could be, too. While significant software products are written for sale, arguably much more software is written by enterprise IT to run businesses as diverse as Safeway stores and Barclays banks.

Unlocking and distributing the value of that enterprise IT, developed to … Read more

Bad economy may lead to good IPOs in open source

Initially, it appeared that every successful open-source company would be swallowed up through acquisition. That may still happen, but as the mergers and acquisitions route dries up, it's increasingly likely that the best open-source companies could find themselves growing toward an initial public offering.

After all, they may not have any other choice.

JBoss, Zimbra, XenSource, and other companies rode an initial surge in interest in open source as a business and development strategy, each selling for hundreds of millions of dollars. Since that time the pace of acquisitions has slowed as would-be buyers hunker down and ride out … Read more