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The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

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Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#51

Post by gabereiser »

hyperthesis wrote: post #50
gabereiser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. They still do this. They are the only ones. They go beyond just "hey, I know of a database that could handle that size" to "why are you storing this here? this is PII, this is analytical data, this is business data, here's a proposal for doing this with open source at scale". It's not just "buy our product". They go above and beyond the needs of the product to the needs of the customer, like you said…

So they're a pure consultancy firm, competing with those infatuated by the write-once-sell-many economics of software.

consultancy is just part of it. They fund many open source projects. They support them commercially. They aren't a Deloitte or Accenture.

Linux Kernel, Various JBoss Software (Keycloak is cool), OpenShift, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and more [1]

[1] https://redhatofficial.github.io/#!/main

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#52

Post by snuxoll »

nine_k wrote: post #49
commandersaki wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Redhat jumped the shark when it started selling its distribution with different licensing options that let you use different number of CPU cores.

I kept thinking that Red Hat's Linux offerings are properly FOSS, and the stuff you buy is support contracts. What are some per-CPU offers from them? (Because that's what I'd expect from Oracle, and hardly from RH.)

Per-core licensing is more or less limited to JBoss stuff and the likes. Stuff like RHEL, OpenShift Enterprise, etc. is typically licensed by socket-pair.

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#53

Post by JadedEngineer »

candiddevmike wrote: post #19
rdtsc wrote: post #12

> If Red Hat tried to force people to pay too much, everyone would switch to the freely distributed versions (AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, etc.). Not if they need a long term supported and certified OS with various compliance checkmarks associated with it.

You can have CIS, FIPS, and a whole host of other compliance without Red Hat, arguably just as easily. The reality is containers and container-first OSs are killing RHEL, you no longer need a breadth of OS packages or a fully capable OS. Just docker or podman. The only place RHEL has a stranglehold is with COTS apps, but those are all moving to containers too. I can't think of any widely used container that uses RHEL…

So containers run on air I take it? No, RHEL isn't being killed, but you're not going to see it as base image for your typical GitHub project. In the enterprise though, where security is tight, no one is going to build containers based on Alpine which is maintained by what, 10 people? Their customers are banks, governments, etc. which will happily pay for what they provide.

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#54

Post by JadedEngineer »

nimbius wrote: post #33

modern redhat --and this cannot be stressed enough-- is nothing like old redhat despite IBM's fervent insistance after the acquisition they would remain hands off. The hat killed Centos because some IBM midlevel manager needed to make quota for a bonus, and they didnt stop to realize just how unsuccessful this tactic was for Oracle/MySQL. moderen redhat is carved into about 40 seperate repositories and channels for p…

[flagged]

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#55

Post by jacooper »

wejick wrote: post #23

Expected to see canonical model get mentioned in the article, combination of proprietary online services with opensource products. Well we know all of debate around it and the peculiarities of canonical, but I feel like it worths mentioning.

Not that they are practically successful at that either.

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#57

Post by JadedEngineer »

weare138 wrote: post #43

The biggest reason why we don’t see support and services companies achieving hyper-growth is that they are uninvestable. Annual revenues are low and nonrecurring, and margins are tight. VCs are looking for 80%+ gross margins and hockey stick growth. In other words, Red Hat's model doesn't work for Wall St and VCs looking to make quick easy money riding out the next tech 'unicorn'. Red Hat has survived and thrived for…

It's almost like building a company slowly, within your means, and focusing on improving the product, is the wrong way to do it these days. Better go with some BS that's flashy, make big claims and promises, and try to get some of that sweet VC money!

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#58

Post by nemothekid »

tssva wrote: post #15

Red Hat early on invested in understanding the needs of the different industry verticals they were trying to sell into and made sure their products could meet things such as compliance and audit requirements of differing sectors. They developed guides on how to deploy their products in a manner which met those requirements and their professional services engineers understood not just Red Hat products but the specific…

Isn't this what the article is saying - if every client of yours needs a highly specialized engineer your margins will be decimated.

Re: The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

#60

Post by INTPenis »

throwaway892238 wrote: post #20

Reasons why people pay for Red Hat: 1. Customer support 2. Certifications 3. Vendor support I don't know another distribution of Linux that provides all these things to the extent Red Hat does. You don't use Red Hat because you want to, you use it because it's the only choice. Any business could do exactly the same thing, and do it better than Red Hat. But there's really not much reason for a customer to move away fr…

4. We have all the in-house support staff we need and only want to use the self-support license, but since we're a service provider we were forced into the CCSP program where each license costs a lot more.
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