Server Operating Systems Category Profile

Old is new again. At least that's the way it looks across the Server Operating Systems market, where legacy software vendor Novell has regained its leading perch among solution providers in the 2006 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) study. Over the past couple of years, Novell has been reinventing itself in the platform department, banking its future on open-source Linux while holding on shrewdly to its proprietary franchise, the 1990s juggernaut formerly known as NetWare, which still accounts for a major chunk of revenue.

The strategy appears to be working, as evidenced by the ARC results. Partners ranked the Waltham, Mass.-based vendor's two server OSes--Open Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server--first and second, respectively, in all four areas of Product Innovation, Support, Partnership and Loyalty.

Open Enterprise Server earned an overall score of 75 on the 100 point scale; SuSE scored 72; Microsoft Windows Server 2003 came in third place with a 71; Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 earned a 69; and SCO trailed the pack with 65.

Much of the credit for Novell's high scores, solution providers say, goes to a revitalized partner organization that has upped the touch factor dramatically.

"Relatively speaking, [Novell's partner group] is a small organization that's fast on its feet," says Jeff Medeiros, CEO of rs-unix, a San Francisco-based solution provider and Novell partner. "And I don't get the parochial behavior you would expect from a company whose revenue has been so dependent on heritage software."

Medeiros is among the growing Linux faithful, and he credits Novell with giving partners and customers a clear road map for migrating legacy systems to the open-source platform.

At Novell, the approach to the server OS space has been twofold: to educate legacy partners about Linux while recruiting solution providers that are already Linux-savvy, according to Starla Cox, Novell's director of North American channels marketing. Cox attributes Novell's strong ARC showing to the strength of the vendor's partner program, particularly its enablement tools and resources, and to fostering more touch points for partners.

"Over the past year, we focused on resources, and each sales area has at least three partner personnel assigned to it," Cox says. "We continue to put a lot of effort into providing the right sales, technology tools and training so partners are sufficiently equipped to sell our products."

In this year's ARC, Microsoft's partners quibbled with both Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows Small Business Server 2003. In Product Innovation, neither OS fared particularly well, with the small-business version ranked dead last in product quality/reliability.

But SCO, despite coming in last in three areas--Support, Partnership and Loyalty--tied with Open Enterprise as the best in product quality/reliability with its UnixWare and OpenServer products. Each scored an 80, vs. 71 for Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, 72 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 78 for SuSE.

Taken as a whole, solution providers are selling Linux, Windows and, yes, some Unix. The server OS landscape is diversified, and one of the big opportunities for solution providers is shoring up the interoperability of mixed environments. Management and monitoring solutions are also key.

Historically, Linux-based solutions have caused interoperability headaches, but those wrinkles are being ironed out, according to Madeiros, and bode well for more Linux servers in mission-critical roles.