05.28.08
For All Your Support Needs, Walk Away from Novell
Some time ago in BrainShare 2008, support from Novell was said to have been deficient. Partners and/or customers complained about poor skills. One bank, for example, said that it was often “hard-pressed to find qualified workers with adequate technical knowledge of the [Novell] products.” Here is another such story which is brand new. It might even inspire you.
…Oxford Archaeology initially adopted Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise but later switched to Ubuntu because Novell’s British office was not responsive in providing support, he said.
Luckily, Novell seems to be addressing these issues, but if you live in the US or Europe, you may be out of luck.
Novell and India
Novell’s new relationship with Genovate was mentioned over the weekend. Some of Novell’s weaknesses were also mentioned last week, following the company’s buybacks and changes in leadership.
These weakness can be seen from all sorts of different angles, despite Novell’s attempt to conceal and embellish. Another interesting part of this may be the “Novell Academic courses” (in India) and offshoring to India. Here are a few articles from the past 5 days alone:
1. Genovate Becomes Novell’s First Platinum Partner In India
Genovate’s subsidiary, RapidStart, to work with local universities and conduct Novell Academic courses.
[…]
Genovate currently operates in nine cities across India which include Mumbai, Cochin, Trichy, Ahmedabad, Pune, Lucknow, Mangalore, Baroda, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Genovate is also looking at catering to both individuals seeking training in relevant fields and institutes alike. RapidStart, Genovate’s subsidiary in India, will strategise in working with local universities and conduct Novell’s academic courses.
2. Singapore firm to offer Novell courses in India
Singapore-based Genovate Solutions, a high-end technology company that provides business applications, software solutions and consulting besides educational programmes and training services in the Asia-Pacific region, is all set to offer Germany-based Novell’s certified courses in India.
3. India gung-ho about open source: Novell
The Suse Linux proponent recently awarded Genovate, an IT training company, the ‘platinum partner’ status. The partnership would enable Genovate to undertake dedicated account management, business planning and the opportunity to co-engage with Novell on major customer opportunities. Through this partnership Genovate will offer Novell Commercial Training, the most technical instruction program offered by Novell.
The demand for the technology, according to Swenson largely stems from government organisations and with many large organizations opting for the easy to deploy software, the training requirement is equally huge. “A single (open source) project required 500 trainees,” she said referring to a project with the Government of TamilNadu, a southern Indian state.
A clarification ought to be made, just in case. This is not a protest against overseas labour. It’s just an observation. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
David Bunn said,
May 29, 2008 at 9:14 am
Support from Novell was said to have been deficient. As many of you know I have my issues with Novell right now. I came from Novell as a Consultant and started my own services firm which is still a platinum parther for Novell I just agreed to a buyout. The issue is expertise, I had the best Ex Novell consultants I could get on the payrole but as Novell moved to Linux the high priced experise I had became very irrellevant. This reason is Novell is not offering any kind of training or good training that allows that expertise to be transferred from NetWare to Linux. Even with expertise which I had a ton off does not translate that expertise to a Linux support stack. Either they know Linux backwards and forwards or they know the Novell Solutions on NetWare but not both. So where do you stick your training dollars on the Novell engineer who doesn’t know Linux or the Linux person who doesn’t know eDirectory, IDM, GroupWise, ZEN, you get the gist. Companies will find adopting SUSE fine until they try to find expertise on both sides of the fence and the cost of training a senior level engineer is quite expensive. So even with training for both types of engineer I end up with a $25,000.00 Admin with no actual feild experience wanting to maintain his/her 80K base salary. Try and sell to a customer why they should buy consulting from Novell or Novell partners at 250hr and ask what experience do they really have.. Can’t be much!