The Two Linuxes
June 11th, 2008 by Ross Chevalier
I’ve run into an interesting perspective in some customer conversations lately and wanted to share it with you. I think that we as citizens of Planet Novell understand that there are two Linuxes in our world, SLE and openSUSE.
When we talk to customers and partners we assume that when we talk about SUSE Linux Enterprise that the listeners know what we mean. After all, we understand the differences. Well maybe our audiences don’t understand. I’ve run into a number of situations in the last month when on calls with partners where we talk about the freedom of choice that Linux and the Open Source stack can bring where the customer’s brow furrows a bit. Yesterday, a Director at a school board became quite incensed when we spoke about Linux and Open Source. He said to us “I have Ubuntu on a laptop and it’s nice enough to fool around with, but I get a dump of updates every week and there’s a new version all the time. There’s no way I would risk my business on Linux and Open Source.” He was quite heated about the whole issue (and the air conditioning was broken in their office). When we had an opportunity to take a deep breath together, he was surprised that I agreed with him. Here was a very intelligent fellow with the capability to install and operate a Linux system who had no idea at all that the enterprise Linux we talk about is different from the Linux he sees in bookstores and on the covers of magazines.
Hence, I think we owe it to ourselves to ask the question whether the listener understands the difference between our amazing community project openSUSE and the best in class SUSE Linux Enterprise. My own data tells me that the answer is “no” a lot more than we might think.
So in the spirit of the challenges I continue to post, I challenge each of you when speaking with a customer or partner about Linux and Open Source for the first time, to ask the question of understanding. It’s a key element of differentiation for us and demonstrates that we are committed to the growth of Linux and Open Source as a global ecosystem and to the refinement of them to deliver the goods in a data center environment whose hallmarks are stability, reliability and not managing daily code changes.
Until next time, peace.