Novell Targets Windows Stack with Open Workgroup Suite

Published: May 17, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you want to take on Microsoft in the software racket--as Novell has done a time or two in its 23-year history--you can't just pick at one aspect of the Microsoft stack. No, you have to hit the Windows platform everywhere, top to bottom, from the server to the desktop right up to the office automation suite. And, with the Open Workgroup Suite, this is what Novell intends to do.

Two months ago, at its BrainShare partner and user group meeting in Salt Lake City, Novell previewed the Open Workgroup Suite, and last week, the product was formally announced. In terms of software, there is nothing new in the stack--it is a mix of open and closed source programs, some controlled by Novell, some by third parties--that replaces the Windows desktop, the Office desktop software stack, and the Windows departmental servers that lash desktops together in millions of offices the world over. What is new is the several different ways that this software is being bundled together and the pricing model that Novell is using.

Rather than basing its licensing for the Open Workgroup Suite on the pricing it uses for the individual server and desktop components that make up the stack--more on that in a minute--Novell has chosen a relatively simple per-seat licensing model. You don't have to count servers, and you don't even have to deploy the software on Linux. But if you do, Novell will give you a big price break compared to deploying the software on NetWare servers and Windows clients.

Open Workgroup Suite consists of a bunch of different pieces of software, and it comes in three flavors. The first two flavors have Open Enterprise Server with a Linux-only license--which is just a funky way of saying SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers with NetWare Services are activated if customers want to use them--plus a license to Novell's GroupWise middleware that is only available to run on that Linux instance (rather than on NetWare, which is where most GroupWise customers run today). The stack also includes the ZENworks suite of systems management tools, Novell Linux Desktop 9 (Novell's commercialized Linux stack for enterprise desktops), the OpenOffice suite for Windows clients (just in case you are not ready for Linux on the desktop), and a license to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. If you just want to use this software stack rather than acquire licenses--that's flavor one--you pay $80 per seat per year. Flavor two is you get perpetual licenses to the software, which would entitle you to use the software even if you are not on a maintenance contract. This flavor costs $110 per seat, plus $75 per seat per year for annual maintenance. Yes, the license doesn't make a lot of sense compared to the subscription pricing, does it? The third option is for licensed versions of Open Enterprise Server and GroupWise that can run on NetWare, plus all the other options in the package. This one costs $150 per user plus $106 per user per year for annual maintenance. As far as I can tell, the middle option exists mostly as a stepping stone between the low-cost Linux-based annual subscription rate of $80 a year and what amounts to a fee of about twice that to license and maintain the NetWare-based variant over a three year time.

This makes very little difference to Linux shops, of course, since they would not deploy the workgroup suite on NetWare anyway. What does matter is that the Linux-only subscription is a lot less expensive than a similar Windows stack, at least according to Novell's interpretation of Microsoft's pricing. Novell says that Microsoft's Enterprise Agreement for desktop software licensing amounts to a $289 per desktop per year charge for equivalent software, and over a three-year period, the Open Workgroup Suite on Linux (using the annual subscription pricing) costs 72 percent less. Novell based its pricing on an organization with 250 seats, which is not exactly a small business.

Back in March, Novell was trying to position Open Workgroup Suite as its first Linux-based workgroup software, but strictly speaking, this is not true. In March 2005, Novell launched a similar stack of software called Linux Small Business Suite 9, which included SLES 9, GroupWise 6.5, Linux Desktop 9 (which had the OpenOffice office suite inside it), eDirectory 8.7.3 for managing server access and directories, and iManager 2.0.2 for managing the server. This suite did not include the ZENworks management tool. Linux SBS 9 was designed to support up to 100 seats; a base setup cost $475 for a five-user license. So, basically, Novell is moving from a licensing to an annual subscription pricing model and throwing in ZENworks with this year's iteration of an SMB stack and charging a big premium for customers who want to license rather than rent the Linux stack and charging an even bigger premium for NetWare licenses for the key software. The message is pretty clear: It's cheaper to rent software and avoid NetWare. The one thing that Novell did smart last year and is still doing this year is keeping agnostic about what desktops the servers talk to. Novell doesn't care if you network to Windows or Linux clients.

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