Novell is seeking to attract Microsoft resellers to its cause on the back of the release of its Open Workgroup Suite, which it claims is 70% cheaper than Microsoft Office but offers better service revenue opportunities for partners.
Workgroup product manager Richard Lindstedt claimed Novell “has a good plan in place for demand generation and lead generation. The big opportunity for partners is to differentiate, and the customer can save a lot of money”.
The Novell Open Workgroup Suite bundles a number of products and services, including Open Enterprise Server, GroupWise for collaboration, ZENworks Suite for cross-platform systems management, Novell Linux Desktop (including Open Office for Linux) and OpenOffice.org for Windows.
The vendor argues the product can bring an immediate return on investment for customers, especially as Novell claims it can utilise hardware better than Microsoft.
Novell believes large numbers of SMBs and SMEs are still running Windows 2000 and Exchange 5.5 because the cost of upgrading their Microsoft products is so expensive. The additional hardware requirements to run Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista and Office 2007 will intensify that concern.
Open Workgroup Suite requires significantly lower specifications. Linux Desktop, for example, can run on a Pentium II+, 266 MHz or higher based system with 800 Mb available disk space and a minimum of 128 Mb RAM, although Novell recommends 256 Mb.
Migration to Open Workgroup “is quite easy” but it is “something that needs to be in the face of customers. They need to see it; they don’t know it requires little training and it isn’t really a problem for users to use,” Lindstedt said.
He argued that customers “are not looking for new fancy GUIs or added features.” He said that, with the maturity of Open Office, it was now good enough for most uses.
Barry Brown, Novell Ireland Technical Account Manager, said he had been approached by two resellers – who had no experience with Novell – “because their customers were demanding they talk with Novell because they believed they were paying too much for the Microsoft products.”
He added that Novell was putting a big drive on the channel and “hoping to get a lot of the Microsoft reseller base on board.”
Pricing for the Open Workgroup Suite is €141 for the licence and €100 a year for maintenance. The Linux-only versions costs €103 new with a maintenance fee of €71 a year.
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