The Sikh Geek

Novell and IBM have brought out a new offering which is a mix and match approach of hardware, operating system and some middleware. Here is what you get :

• IBM System X or Bladecenter Hardware
• InfoPrint 1532n Express
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server v10
• IBM Websphere Application Server Community Edition
• IBM DB2 Express-C Database
• Likewise Management Suite

Okay, so what applications are you going to run on it? May be you’ll just code up your own groupware solution to run on the application server! What CRM system are you going to deploy that will use DB2 Express-C? Hmmm, starts to get tricky doesn’t it? Oh! and what about an intranet site with document management that integrates with your Office Productivity suite? Don’t be silly, what small business would want that!

This is what frustrates me, is that Novell and IBM will just throw a load of technologies together and say here you go we’re providing you with all the basic plumbing, but sorry you’ll have to pay our enterprise license fees to get any of the good stuff like Domino Server/Lotus Notes, Tivoli, etc. They have the products that functionally still outperform Exchange Server/Outlook but just not for the small business market. I want to have a real choice between SBS 2003 and a Linux based solution!!