Some interesting things from the keynote at Brainshare this week:
1. Novell is definitely moving to xNix (SuSE)
2. Novell will take the fall for companies buying xNix products (if SCO wants to sue, for instance)
3. They really, really don’t like Microsoft
4. Training will be stepped up a notch, and Linux certification will be stepped up several notches
This is interesting. 4 years ago, everyone figured Novell would just die a silent death. Sales of products were way down, Netware adoption was in the negatives.
Last year they bought SuSE. (Ximian, okay?)
They are now pushing Linux huge. Incredibly huge. All products now available on Linux. All partner and maintenance customers getting free licenses of all Linux versions of products. New certification tract.
…
And a whole lot of anti-Microsoft jokes.
This is a really good move for Linux and for Novell. Novell had no hope of surviving as a second-tier OS and product provider. They had to piggy-back off of someone, and they really didn’t like that someone being Microsoft.
They now have their own OS, a whole new line of products and a hope for the future. A lot of people respect Novell. By throwing their weight, and the entire company, firmly behind Linux, I honestly believe they’ve saved themselves.
They’ll validate Linux. They’ll become the key Linux certifying authority (I honestly believe that the only company that is better at certification testing is Microsoft, edit: and Cisco, I’ve been corrected… the practical aspects of the Cisco exams are fantastic). They’ll become a huge mover of Linux software, as well as hardware (appliances) through their partners.
They’ll move boxes through HP and through IBM. While I don’t think this is tantamount to Linux taking over the world, the visibility of the platform has increased hugely thanks to Novell.
Maybe Linus wasn’t such a sellout after all, eh? 
March 29th, 2004 at 3:15 pm
I’d have to disagree with Microsoft having a good certification program. Known too many worthless MCSEs in my experiences to think that it’s a good cert. Having studied the material, I also think that it teaches you almost nothing about working with their products in the real world.
Much better reading would be Microsoft’s Best Practices and other White Papers on deployment.
BTW want to know something funny? The average salary for an IT worker with 2 certs and a High School education is actually LESS than that of someone with only a High School education.
I think that the MCSE should have a lab based test similar to CCIE (now that’s a real cert worth real money). That will totally cull out the paper MCSEs and make the cert mean something.
December 7th, 2004 at 1:09 am
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