1/19/2005 -- A little over a year ago, Novell decided that it wanted to change direction and become a Linux company. While this decision from what was once an Intel-networking market giant did not seem all that odd -- after all, IBM has tread similar water -- its decision to purchase SuSE lock, stock and barrel left more than a few observers scratching their heads.

SuSE has long been a darling in the Linux community, respected for its distribution and variations (it is now up to version 9.2 and comes in Personal, Professional and Server Enterprise versions). Germany-based Novell is a market leader in Europe and is well known for its focus on security and reliability, not to mention usability. Combining the esteemed SuSE with Novell, written off by many as a dinosaur of days past, begs the question, “Can SuSE survive?”

I wobbled on the fence for a while, did some research and came to a conclusion that I’m very comfortable with. My answer is that it’ll not only survive under the new arrangement, but also flourish within a short period of time.

To substantiate this, consider the following five items:

1. Novell isn’t just dabbling with Linux; it’s betting the farm on it. Whereas IBM and others have claimed support for Linux, Novell is truly putting its money where its mouth is. Not only did it purchase SuSE, it also bought Ximian. In that deal, it was able to get Miguel de Icaza -- the brains behind Ximian and GNOME and now a driving force behind Mono. Mono, to quote the official releases, “is a comprehensive open source development platform based on the .NET framework that allows developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with unprecedented productivity.”
   
2. Novell has the marketing power, drive and organizational structure to get SuSE in the door in the U.S. While SuSE has been huge with corporations overseas, it never reached the same stature in North America, a market that Red Hat has become firmly entrenched in. Novell, on the other hand, knows U.S. corporations well, having once worked with them, if not still having a strong presence among them now.
   
3. SuSe clearly has the development muscle. According to its Web site, SuSE has “the largest dedicated Linux research and development team.” According to Jurgen Geck, CTO of SuSE Linux AG, in an interview with CXOtoday, “Novell has more support engineers than Red Hat has employees. If you do the math, the equation is clear: We present a stronger support model. Novell today has more engineers working on Open Source software than IBM.”
   
4. While Novell didn’t come up with the idea of certifications (not by a long shot), it can be given a great deal of credit for turning it into the evangelistic campaign that it is now. It realized early on that those holding certifications are the ones who support the products, talk to managers and make recommendations. Given this, it focused its exams on the strengths of its products, the new features they offered, and the capabilities inherent in them. Whether you agree with this tactic or not, it made the Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) program the success that it became for Novell and helped shape the certification industry.
   
   With the ink still drying on its acquisitions, the certification team at Novell fashioned a two-tiered structure based on practicums (hands-on exams, rather than multiple-choice tests). At the high end, there is the Certified Linux Engineer (CLE) certification. At the entry level, there is the Certified Linux Professional (CLP) certification, which is now live. While not a requirement, the CLP is the perfect first step toward the CLE. These two certifications will allow Novell to educate its front-line evangelists on the features of SuSE and get Novell’s foot further into corporate doors.
   
5. While Novell may represent old-fashioned ways of doing business to those who grew up on Linux, it represents something else to those who grew up in the days when small business networks were a novel idea. To those individuals -- many of who have worked their way into management and positions of decision making -- Novell represents a large, publicly held and traded company.
   
   From the members of this faction I have spoken with, two thoughts come to some of their minds when considering SuSE and Novell: First, that Novell’s entrance into the Linux market verifies the OS’s existence and brings validity to it. In other words, it substantiates that there really is a push under way to migrate to Linux. Second, the version of Linux offered by Novell is trustworthy simply because they remember trusting Novell with the ability to network their businesses years ago and have good memories of that.
   
   To this audience, the association of SuSE and Novell means that SuSE is the flavor of Linux they’ll consider if they’re thinking about changing operating systems.

Don’t get me wrong -- the future of SuSE surely won’t be a bed of roses. There will be obstacles that crop up along the way as the two companies try to integrate their (very different) corporate cultures, but that’s to be expected whenever two companies merge. There are many horror stories about the two companies and their products, like WordPerfect, which Novell purchased a decade ago and let languish. I don’t see that happening today, because Novell has learned from its past mistakes, and the stakes are now too high. This is a game it wants to win.

There may or may not be a big red N on the box a year from now, but either way, I predict you’ll be seeing a lot more of SuSE in the workplace in the next 12 months.

What do you think? Let us know by posting your thoughts below!