Is this the RHEL deal?: Insight

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Is this the RHEL deal?

By Fran Foo, 0
October 28, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/soa/Is-this-the-RHEL-deal-/0,139023731,120280223,00.htm

Pre-show coverage
Gartner Symposium Sydney 2003
ZDNet Australia

COMMENTARY--At the recent launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 in Sydney, executives from the Linux seller were in an understandably good mood.

Red Hat, a company which has for years battled naysayers for its role in packaging and "transforming" free code for a fee, had posted solid quarterly earnings of US$3.3 million in net income on revenue growth of 36 percent (US$28.8 million).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux or RHEL had finally come of age with its latest release, the company insisted. The new, more stable version would improve access to databases and perform better with Java -- key plus-points with corporate users and made possible through a new threading system called Native Posix Threading Library (NPTL).

Corporate customers will be pleased to note that RHEL 3.0 will go beyond x86 PCs to include support for IBM's zSeries mainframes and computers running on Intel's Itanium processor and AMD's Opteron chip.

At the event, Gus Robertson, the company's Asia-Pacific vice president, proudly proclaimed that Linux was beginning to be recognised as a "safe" choice. Did he mean it was previously too perilous for corporate Australia?

Robertson said there's been a huge increase in customer and partner interest in Linux-based enterprise solutions, an observation backed by Matthew Boon, a Gartner Asia-Pacific vice president.

"There's definitely a high level of interest in Linux and companies are evaluating how it can fit into their IT infrastructures," Boon said.

But the analyst cautioned that it's not a bed of roses -- Red Hat still has a long way to go and one area of concern is after-sales service.

"Red Hat is improving, although it's still not on par with HP, IBM and Sun at a service and support level ... customers are still nervous so they look to hardware vendors to provide support," Boon said in an interview.

I believe Red Hat's biggest obstacle is not technology. Rather, it's the battle of brand recall and perception. Unless these hurdles are overcome, Red Hat will remain on the periphery of IT departments and continue playing second fiddle to the big boys. Perhaps it should borrow a page from the gurus of tech marketing -- Microsoft?