Several days ago, I got an email from Han Wen Kam (甘汉文), Senior Technology Specialist, Global Strategic Partners, Asia Pacific Novell Inc. He emailing me after reading my blog and found that I’m currently active building Indonesian openSUSE Community.
In his email, Han Wen Kam asked me about Indonesian openSUSE community, it’s activity and about his goal to linking openSUSE community all around ASEAN (South East Asia). He also asked me about the possibility how Novell could support our activity and efforts in Indonesia. I greatly appreciated his email because Indonesia openSUSE community initiated for help spreading promotional stuff and supporting openSUSE/SUSE users in Indonesia.
Actually, I told him that I’m not really satisfied with Novell promotional product and policy in Indonesia. Novell has a good acceptable product with Novell Netware in 1995-2000 but it has suddenly out of business with the introduction of Windows NT and Windows Server. Novell has partner and global partner in Indonesia but it seems the market share just a little niche in enterprise scale (CMIIW) and Novell’s product not really well known in Indonesia.
I think there was 2 main problem why it was happen. The first one is about promotional stuff and the second is about loyal community. Although Microsoft has a strong position, Novell should have an opportunity to increase their market share in Indonesia. This opportunity was taken by Red Hat and I would say that Red Hat is the first choice for Enterprise application beside Microsoft Product.
SLED/SLES and another Novell product is a good product. I’m quite satisfied with the quality of openSUSE so I can prove that it is true. Although it was a good and solid product, it could not help expanding the market share without good support and loyal community.
There is nothing wrong with commercial approach because business stand for sales revenue but if we talk in marketing term, I would suggest to educated the market, making a good condition and environment before reached commercial benefit. If we have solid community with ten thousand or more members, it should have business opportunity came from the community.
I don’t have statistical report about Novell sales revenue from Indonesia but I know there is a big opportunity to increase the sales revenue, market share and product branding. With 200+ million of people, trend of Linux implementation in public area and enterprise scale, Indonesia may become a big market beside USA, Europe, North America, Japan, China and India. It may need a market education but it looks promising.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 will be officially launched for next 2-4 months. The global economic recession in USA and Europe seems to be a hard work for all of us. I’m very disappointed to see our fellow developer who work for Novell with love and passion accidentally leaved it because it was a difficult condition for Novell. I don’t want to see another fellow developer forced out because the condition take a long time to recover. The SLES launched should be a good starting point to promoting SLES in Indonesia and to increase Novell sales revenue from Asia Pacific.
Global Economic Recession and Novell Business Opportunity in Indonesia
I totally agree with you that Novell has a winner in its midst, the SUSE Linux family; but Novell suck big time in marketing.
Since I have always been a fan of SUSE (I actually bought a copy of SLED 10 for my own use), I did bring up the idea of setting a local OpenSUSE/SLE community to Novell Malaysia; their answer was a very corporate, “No budget”!
And so if they are not interested in cultivating a local user base to compliment their offerings, and merely want to “sell” products, it is little wonder why SUSE Linux will always be the last choice after Red Hat and Ubuntu.
I confess that I have absolutely no knowledge of what is the situation of Novell Indonesia’s efforts but it sounds familiar to what we have over here across the Straits of Melaka.
Salam mesra dari Kuala Lumpur.
I totally agree with you that Novell has a winner in its midst, the SUSE Linux family; but Novell suck big time in marketing.
Since I have always been a fan of SUSE (I actually bought a copy of SLED 10 for my own use), I did bring up the idea of setting a local OpenSUSE/SLE community to Novell Malaysia; their answer was a very corporate, “No budget”!
And so if they are not interested in cultivating a local user base to compliment their offerings, and merely want to “sell” products, it is little wonder why SUSE Linux will always be the last choice after Red Hat and Ubuntu.
I confess that I have absolutely no knowledge of what is the situation of Novell Indonesia’s efforts but it sounds familiar to what we have over here across the Straits of Melaka.
Salam mesra dari Kuala Lumpur.
@Eric Yeoh,
Thank you for a nice and warm regards 😀
AFAIK, the situation where SUSE Linux will always be the last choice after Red Hat and Ubuntu similar with our situation in Indonesia. In Enterprise scale, SLES defeated by RHEL while the Desktop usage, openSUSE need more promotional event, strong community and good support to make this as an attractive choice beside Ubuntu.
If we talked about the sales revenue, we should also talk about the future. Making a good and loyal community may not helped much for a short term but the market will increased at the future. It was not easy as well as not too difficult because Novell has a good product and we have a seeds for much bigger users (customers) by initiating the community.
Salam hangat dari Bekasi
@Eric Yeoh,
Thank you for a nice and warm regards 😀
AFAIK, the situation where SUSE Linux will always be the last choice after Red Hat and Ubuntu similar with our situation in Indonesia. In Enterprise scale, SLES defeated by RHEL while the Desktop usage, openSUSE need more promotional event, strong community and good support to make this as an attractive choice beside Ubuntu.
If we talked about the sales revenue, we should also talk about the future. Making a good and loyal community may not helped much for a short term but the market will increased at the future. It was not easy as well as not too difficult because Novell has a good product and we have a seeds for much bigger users (customers) by initiating the community.
Salam hangat dari Bekasi
although i am not a fanatic fan of SUSE, but i am so glade to know about the possibility that novell could extend support for indonesian OpenSUSE community as they did for others.
although i am not a fanatic fan of SUSE, but i am so glade to know about the possibility that novell could extend support for indonesian OpenSUSE community as they did for others.
Hi Masim, how many Platespin deployment in Indonesia now ?
hv u try any solution to spped up the DR on remote ?
jako9992 at hotmail dot com