Q & A: Novell UK & Ireland country manager Sean McCarry

Sean McCarry : You'll have to ask Microsoft about their desktop strategy for Windows/Linux co-existence.

With well-known vendors like HP reporting slumping profits, and flat-to-decreasing IT budgets predicted for a lot of firms as the recession deepens, can Linux dent Microsoft's hegemony on the enterprise desktop?

Computing talked to Novell's recently-installed UK and Ireland country manager, Sean McCarry, about Novell's Linux strategy on the desktop and how he sees customers preparing for the disconcerting economy.

What's the business split between the different areas of Novell?

Sean McCarry: There's three main areas. Firstly there’s the open platform solutions (OPS) platform - basically our datacentre business, which includes the Linux server arm. We also we acquired Platespin technology in March 2008 for its virtualisation management technology, and towards the end of last year we also bought ManageObjects – which we see as targetted more towards the visualisation and configuration database systems end of the market. We also have systems management tools which sit in the datacentre area and deal with all of customer's heterogeneous system environments.

Secondly there’s the identity and security management (ISM) part of the business. Our Sentinel system concentrates on the audit and login side of the business, and we also have our larger identity management solutions. Atos Origin are one of our worldwide partners and we also have systems in the Ministry of Justice, while on the commercial side ITV have deployed our systems. Lastly there’s the systems resource management (SRM) part, like the configuration management package ZENworks.

How is it that Linux hasn’t seized more market share because of Microsoft’s difficulties with its Vista OS?

We have the likes of Peugeot in France and large customer references across Europe, but I’d say in the UK we’re very enterprise-focussed, so we're really looking at Microsoft’s heartland, with the large corporate and government organisations. I would say we’re having more and more conversations regarding Linux desktop in the enterprise space, mainly with desktop collaboration suites.

A lot of the retail community and even the banking community use Linux on their point-of-sale till solutions, but I suppose you’re talking about the competition between Novell and Microsoft on the desktop. In government systems, we’re seeing demand increase, albeit slowly. In the current environment I think the future possibilities will increase as customers look for more cost effective solutions.

Do you think Linux is still viewed as a more complex operating system than Windows?

I think it’s probably down to the applications which need to be integrated to the desktop. The positive statement on this side is that Novell has got 2,500 certified independent software vendors (ISVs), a much bigger number than we had before. Because of that growth, I think with respect to integration of business-critical applications on the desktop, the more we can make that an easy migration, the better the opportunities there’ll be for us. But again, with these economic challenges I think there are more and more people looking at ways to make their IT budgets go further. At the moment I’m seeing a huge demand for proprietary Unix to Linux server migrations giving massive cost savings, and I think we’ll see more of that on the desktop.

How is the Microsoft interoperability agreement progressing?

Really positively, we’re in an environment where they’re a very close partner to Novell, but we do compete aggressively in different areas – a lot of partnerships in IT are used to that environment.

Remember, the relationship was focused very much around the datacentre and it was really on the virtualisation side to drive customer demand for mixed Windows/Linux - as in Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) - environments compared with so many different flavours of Unix/Linux.

What the agreement has done is help Novell meet customer requirements where they’re looking at joint strategies to reduce the number of vendors they have in the datacentre. Where this agreement also helps as well, is document format compatibility – sharing documents through Office and Novell's edition of OpenOffice.

If you create a dual boot Microsoft/Linux desktop, by installing Windows then Linux, Linux will recognise the Windows OS, if you install Linux first and then Windows, Windows won’t recognize Linux, do you think that will change at some point?

I can't comment on the desktop, but in the datacentre Novell SLES can act as the host or the guest operating system for Windows Server 2008. So I think we're really strong in the datacentre with the Microsoft relationship, but you'd have to ask Microsoft about their desktop strategy for Windows/Linux co-existence.

One of the main problems with virtualisation is managing large numbers of virtual machines, what do think Platespin brings to Novell?

What Platespin brought to Novell was exactly that, managing virtual migrations from physical to virtual, from virtual to virtual and actually from virtual to physical. What customers are telling us is that it's a great benefit and that Novell are taking their datacentre strategy seriously.

Many customers have a lot of existing investment in datacentre infrastructure and our strategy is not a rip-and-replace one, but working with their existing technology. If you look at the challenges of the economy today, Novell's strapline is around reduction of cost and complexity, one of the advantages we have over other Linux distributions is that we have an end-to-end enterprise-class solution.