SUSE to slash directly managed resellers
Linux vendor to throw weight behind fewer than 20 UK & Ireland partners as it looks to get more aggressive with rival Red Hat
Linux outfit SUSE is cutting the number of resellers it manages directly by more than two-thirds as it looks to pool its efforts behind its top partners.
The vendor, now an autonomous business unit of Attachmate Group, currently manages 62 UK and Ireland partners.
Brian Green, UK and Ireland managing director at SUSE (pictured), said this would be reduced to fewer than 20 as the vendor looks to back partners that can help it wrest market share from larger rival Red Hat. The remainder will be managed by distributors Interactive Ideas and Arrow ECS.
Green earmarked big datacentre projects in the city as a key battleground for SUSE and its channel.
"We have a very obvious competitor but take a slightly different approach. We are very customer driven in that we believe in open flexibility as well as open source," he said.
"We are in a great position as we are the preferred Linux distributor for both VMware and Microsoft, which have 80 per cent of the [virtualisation] hypervisor market between them. We are looking to invest more resources in these [VMware and Microsoft] partners that can get us into these fights."
SUSE - which has a global turnover of $190m - was split out from Novell following the closure of its parent's acquisition by Attachmate in April.
Green said the reorganisation would also enable Novell and its sister brands to be more responsive to partners.
"Unleashing the SUSE brand enables us to be much clearer in the way we articulate our message to the channel and customers," he said. "More importantly, partners now know exactly who to interact with in the Attachmate Group in relation to the Linux opportunity. If you are in a competitive situation and need to be creative commercially, the speed is that much faster as we have taken away those layers."
In July, Microsoft committed another $100m investment in SUSE Linux for collaboration on Windows and Linux interoperability support.
Green said the investment should eradicate any nagging doubts over whether or not Attachmate is committed to Novell's products.
"A $60bn software company has just invested $100m in the future of SUSE, on an exclusive basis, until January 2016 - this is not a bad endorsement that they think our products are going to be around for some time," he said.
Andrew King, managing director at SUSE-focused Linux Gold partner Grey Matter, said: "Being run as a separate entity gives SUSE more focus and it is good to hear they are still engaging in their Microsoft relationship.
"We sell a lot of Microsoft server software as well as SUSE and many customers have a mixed environment. So I welcome the fact that Microsoft and a Linux company are collaborating."