[WBEL-users] Dell: Red Hat needs to lower prices

[Wes A. Jones]

Just goes back to what I predicted back when RH9 came out. Granted, RH9 
was/is a great and stable OS and I even still like it. But I told many 
people that RH was turning into the next Micro$oft. I knew it was just a 
matter of time before the RH team started to get that itch for more 
money more money. When RH first started out, that business model was 
next to perfect in my book. Get a good user base with a "free" product, 
offer support for a small price, get in the retail chains (look at 
Mandrake, it's still alive and people still have it as a preference), 
offer a product for the enterprise, set up certifications. Then BOOM. 
Drop the users like a sack of dead cats, release a "new" distro that is 
like MS WinME (aka buggy), raise the prices of not just the software, 
but support. And now, looking at the cost of ownership, from start to 
finish, Micro$oft is actually CHEAPER! Now what is wrong with this picture?

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John Hinton wrote:

> Forrest Samuels wrote:
>
>> I am sure many of you read Slashdot (where I saw this) but I thought 
>> this
>> was a very relevant article:
>>
>> "Red Hat needs to lower its prices, or risk losing customers to free
>> versions of the open-source operating system, the Dell executive who
>> oversees the partnership with the Linux seller said Tuesday."
>>
>> http://news.com.com/Dell%3A+Red+Hat+needs+to+lower+prices/2100-7344_3-548223 
>>
>> 4.html?tag=st_lh
>>
>> I find it interesting that they don't mention the RHEL clones in the
>> article, just Debian and Solaris 10.
>>
>> -Forrest
>>  
>>
> I personally believe this is a much broader statement by Dell. One 
> which is an opinion that RedHat is driving away Dell's clients who 
> have been buying systems with RHEL installed. I think the reference to 
> 'attitudes' when a tech becomes popular, was one where those companies 
> ran their prices up significantly, only to find soon after they were 
> in trouble due to lack of sales. Is it better to sell one item at $100 
> or 20 at $10. That is a hard question for all businesses.
>
> I believe Dell couldn't consider the clones of RedHat for two reasons. 
> One, they need to strike a deal with a company to insure the continued 
> support of the software Dell is selling and setting up on their 
> machines. Two, I think they are predicting bad times ahead for RedHat, 
> and if RedHat suffers from bad times, so will all the RHEL clones to 
> some degree.
>
> The fact that WBEL and the clones exist, is testiment to the fact that 
> RedHat has no affordable alternatives for the small to medium sized 
> business. One can buy once, a Microsoft server package for about what 
> Redhat wants for two years of RHEL. At the end of that two years the 
> M$ package is yours. At the end of that two years you are still paying 
> every year of the RH package. I just see something vastly wrong when a 
> Linux package full of open source software cost more than a M$ 
> package. I couldn't chew it. We have about 12 servers online now. We 
> need bind on them. That puts us into the $349 per year subscription. 
> That's $4,188.00 per year. That's a LOT of money for us. When there 
> are altenatives, such as Debian, which provide all we need, there is 
> no way spending that kind of money for something which is available 
> for free is going to fly here. I was actually headed off to Debian 
> when Whitebox came along.
>
> Yes, I still feel stung by RedHat and its change in policy. At the 
> moment of announcement, we were running only a few servers and had our 
> one free subscription plus subscribed the others. We do like to 
> 'donate' to those providing good when we can. I often times purchased 
> the boxed editions of Redhat to try to get some extra money their way 
> as well. But, to go up from what was costing us $200 per year to a 
> whopping one time leap for three servers to over $1000 per year, while 
> at the same time we were bringing on more machines (therefore the 4100 
> cost). That was simply just too much to swallow.
>
> I think Dell is making a prediction the Redhat might be doing well at 
> the moment, but that it is only doing so due to clients who were 
> caught in the 3 months to decide what to do phase, and just had to 
> sign up with Redhat. As time passes, folks can find alternatives and 
> move away. To me, the bottom line... RedHat's prices are too high. I'm 
> glad a strategic partner made the public statement. Fedora for me is 
> potentially too ragged. The number of RHEL clones makes a very loud 
> statement in and of itself.
>
> Best,
> John Hinton
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