The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy has taken some shots at Novell over the years. Having written about the company since 1992, he hasn’t been upbeat about Novell’s prospects since, um, the arrival of NetWare 4 more than a decade ago. But two Novell-related developments caught his attention today.

First, The Wall Street Journal finally noticed that Linux is gaining a bit of momentum on the desktop. Sure, today’s Journal story rehashed old news about a major auto company licensing Novell SuSE Linux for up to 20,000 desktops. The VAR Guy told you that in January. Even so, it’s significant when the mainstream press takes the time to mention Linux–and particularly, Novell–on the desktop. (Memo to Red Hat: You’re so focused on the server that you may actually give Novell new life on the desktop.)

Now, for the other big piece of Novell news. The company announced extensive SuSE Linux support for SAP’s applications. Let’s hope that this is part of a bigger, broader strategy within Novell to recruit more ISV support for SuSE Linux.

Customers don’t wake up in the morning with the urge to buy Linux servers. What they want are great applications. If those applications happen to run on SuSE Linux, Novell may finally recover from all of its missteps in the 1990s.