Unisys Certifies SUSE Linux, Sells Support Alongside Novell

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server maker Unisys is, as promised, now supporting Linux alongside the Windows platform, which it has been promoting exclusively on it ES7000 servers for nearly four years. And while Unisys has been working with Novell to tweak the Linux 2.6 kernel and other code inside of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 to take full advantage of the ES7000s, Unisys aims to capitalize on the effort by selling supplemental services to its enterprise customers.

According to Tom Manter, director of the enterprise Linux program at Unisys, the company is not just going to let Novell come in and get all of the service and support money for customers who decide to put Linux on the boxes. In fact, what Unisys is doing, according to Manter, is offering a set of additional support and services that complement the basic offerings from Novell for SLES 9 on its own ES7000 server platform. For instance, Unisys is offering an extended 24/7 service contract with one-hour or two-hour turn around time on support calls. Under the deal Unisys has with Novell, which is similar to deals with IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Unisys provides a single point of contact for customers with SLES 9, providing both Level 1 and Level 2 support; if the situation warrants it, Unisys escalates to Level 3 and brings in Novell's own techies, and they work together to resolve the problem.

This is a smart tactic, particularly considering that Unisys has a respected support organization with a worldwide reach with which to build its own Linux support offering. Moreover, Unisys will be able to do the same thing in a month or so when Red Hat launches Enterprise Linux 4, which is also based on the Linux 2.6 kernel. In fact, says Manter, this is exactly the game plan that Unisys has in mind for Red Hat 4, which the company is certifying in its labs right now.

What Unisys is being cagey about is what it's charging for its Linux support services. "Our pricing is very competitive," said Manter with a smile, adding that the company's services fees are based on a per-server pricing model, not on the number of processors in the box. He would not say anything about what Novell's cut was in the deal.

This is, of course, the same tack that Unisys could take in the Unix market now that Sun Microsystems is taking its Solaris 10 operating system open-source. I have been pressing Unisys executives about supporting Solaris, particularly since Solaris already runs on 32-bit Xeon processors, which are used in the ES7000 500 series of machines, and Unisys has been targeting the vast Unix installed base to push its ES7000s. While Solaris 9 was created for the Itanium processor, which is used in the ES7000 400 series machines, Sun never delivered it as a product. (IBM never did release its "Project Monterey" AIX for Itanium, either, even though it was finished.) However, now that Solaris 10 is out, will soon be open-source, and supports the 64-bit extensions in the Xeon and Opteron processors, Unisys will soon have a real shot at going directly, rather than indirectly, at the Unix business. At some point this year, the 64-bit "Potomac" Xeon MP processors will be out, and OpenSolaris will have been out for a few months. All the pieces will finally be there, and it seems unlikely that Unisys will pass up this chance. Unisys could support Solaris 10 on its 32-bit machines right now, but they would hit the 64 GB memory bottleneck of 32-bit, 32-way machines. Whether or not Unisys will work with Sun's support organization to create a similar

In addition to the SLES 9 support, Unisys announced that it has signed an agreement with JBoss, the commercial company behind the open source JBoss application server, to allow its services arm to offer companies production support for JBoss. Unisys has been contributing the JBoss programming effort, and will continue to do so. The company did not provide details about its JBoss services.