Comments on: Memo to Canonical: Follow Red Hat’s Partner Lead http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/ WorksWithU is the independent guide to Ubuntu Linux Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:44:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Joe Panettieri http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/comment-page-1/#comment-3496 Joe Panettieri Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:02:33 +0000 http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/#comment-3496 Jef: You've asked some great questions. WorksWithU does need to take a far closer look at Canonical's ISV efforts, business models, etc. Keep asking the hard questions, and we'll try to find the answers or at least raise the issues. I know you're critical of our content. We welcome the constructive criticism. Jef: You’ve asked some great questions. WorksWithU does need to take a far closer look at Canonical’s ISV efforts, business models, etc. Keep asking the hard questions, and we’ll try to find the answers or at least raise the issues. I know you’re critical of our content. We welcome the constructive criticism.

]]> By: Jef Spaleta http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/comment-page-1/#comment-3489 Jef Spaleta Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:33:47 +0000 http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/#comment-3489 Didn't Canonical already put a channel strategy out into the wild with its partner repository concept? http://www.canonical.com/services/packaging Introduced in Dapper (or earlier). Here you can see its success by looking at the contents of the partner repository for each supported Ubuntu release. http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/ For Hardy specifically it looks like there are 8 source packages listed http://archive.canonical.com/dists/hardy/partner/source/Sources Anyone care to talk about the health of that existing Canonical ISV program before speculating about what Canonical might be doing in the future? I've seen no real analysis of the current Canonical ISV partnership program. In fact it seems to me people are deliberately going out of their way to ignore it's existence. I guess its a lot more palatable speculate about what Canonical will do instead of looking closely at how Canonical is actually doing with the programs it actually has in place right now. The real problem that Canonical has is the no acquisition cost model they've put in place for Ubuntu. It's a completely different landscape than RHEL, as every RHEL install has an upfront cost in the form of a minimal support contract requirment. Any ISV channel associated with RHEL drives RHEL contract subscriptions. How exactly does a strong ISV channel for Ubuntu help Canonical sell services? There's no up front service contract cost for Ubuntu that Canonical requires. Canonical can't copy Red Hat's model, the underlying economics are different. To really leverage an ISV channel Canonical would need to tie ISV offerings directly into landscape or some other service..making the Canonical services a compelling value-add in ISV bundles. Is landscape ready to be that sort of thing? And really, can Canonical compete with people like RightScale or Turnkey in the same Ubuntu ISV oriented market space? -jef Didn’t Canonical already put a channel strategy out into the wild with its partner repository concept?

http://www.canonical.com/services/packaging

Introduced in Dapper (or earlier).

Here you can see its success by looking at the contents of the partner repository for each supported Ubuntu release.

http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/

For Hardy specifically it looks like there are 8 source packages listed
http://archive.canonical.com/dists/hardy/partner/source/Sources

Anyone care to talk about the health of that existing Canonical ISV program before speculating about what Canonical might be doing in the future? I’ve seen no real analysis of the current Canonical ISV partnership program. In fact it seems to me people are deliberately going out of their way to ignore it’s existence. I guess its a lot more palatable speculate about what Canonical will do instead of looking closely at how Canonical is actually doing with the programs it actually has in place right now.

The real problem that Canonical has is the no acquisition cost model they’ve put in place for Ubuntu. It’s a completely different landscape than RHEL, as every RHEL install has an upfront cost in the form of a minimal support contract requirment. Any ISV channel associated with RHEL drives RHEL contract subscriptions.

How exactly does a strong ISV channel for Ubuntu help Canonical sell services? There’s no up front service contract cost for Ubuntu that Canonical requires. Canonical can’t copy Red Hat’s model, the underlying economics are different. To really leverage an ISV channel Canonical would need to tie ISV offerings directly into landscape or some other service..making the Canonical services a compelling value-add in ISV bundles. Is landscape ready to be that sort of thing?
And really, can Canonical compete with people like RightScale or Turnkey in the same Ubuntu ISV oriented market space?

-jef

]]> By: Links 15/04/2009: New GCC and Linux RCs | Boycott Novell http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/comment-page-1/#comment-3447 Links 15/04/2009: New GCC and Linux RCs | Boycott Novell Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:47:46 +0000 http://www.workswithu.com/2009/04/14/memo-to-canonical-follow-red-hats-partner-lead/#comment-3447 [...] Memo to Canonical: Follow Red Hat’s Partner Lead So, where’s Canonical? Admittedly, the company has its hands full developing Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 9.10 and Landscape updates. But stay patient. Based on some educated guesses, I think Canonical will show more channel progress by mid-2009. In the meantime, Canonical should take a close look at Red Hat and the Open Source Channel Alliance to see how go-to-market partner strategies are evolving. [...] [...] Memo to Canonical: Follow Red Hat’s Partner Lead So, where’s Canonical? Admittedly, the company has its hands full developing Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 9.10 and Landscape updates. But stay patient. Based on some educated guesses, I think Canonical will show more channel progress by mid-2009. In the meantime, Canonical should take a close look at Red Hat and the Open Source Channel Alliance to see how go-to-market partner strategies are evolving. [...]

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