-----Original Message----- From: Peter Van Lone [mailto:petervl@gmail.com] [...] well first:
I would say that since SUSE is the worlds #2 enterrpise distro, the large customers are out there. It's just a numbers game. If your company chooses not to find where they live and pursue them, then it is either poor judgement or poor marketing analysis or teh result of a strategic decision. Why ask us?
Cuz, while many of the people on this list are hobbyist and individual/personal users (and thus in no position to respond), perhaps SOME are actually working for sizeable companies that actually make significant use of SUSE (assuming that such exist). I figure that persons who know something useful/helpful can answer in that way, persons who don't know or don't care can just hit "Next" in their mail reader, and persons who are bored and have nothing better to do can go to the trouble of criticizing me for asking. Something for everyone. Really, if SUSE actually _is_ the number 2 enterprise Linux solution, and rapidly catching up to RedHat (as claimed elsewhere) then doesn't it stand to reason that at least a few people from important SUSE-using companies are on this list? Yes, I could subscribe to the SLES list and ask my single question, but since I'm already subscribed here, why not ask? Also, I would expect a parallel to Windows: the IT people using the enterprise/server versions of the OS would subscribe to the server-room-guru lists, and the people who do everyday tasks with the desktop version would subscribe to lists like this one (and the SUSE-KDE list)... with some overlap, just like Windows users do on Windows lists. I don't think that it's unreasonable for at least a few people to speak up and say: "I work for Company X, and we've all/mostly moved to SUSE on the desktop, and our IT department uses SUSE enterprise servers." Well, actually a couple of people have said things like that in the past, but they were talking about companies of three or ten people. I'm looking for companies that could afford, and be interested in the kind of products we sell, and thus be of some interest to the higher-ups. By the way, before some **** accuses me of trying to sell on the list, don't bother. The company is doing well and has a huge available market among Windows and Unix-using companieswith plenty of untapped share to be pursued. My only interest is - as I said earlier - I'd like to see my favorite distro get some attention, instead of RH hogging the limelight, and I'd like to run SUS at work without being questioned "shouldn't you install RH, since we support RH?" I'd also rather that my employer be the one to pay attention to SUSE users before our competitors do... assuming there's a market of any size. I don't consider it trolling or near-spam, because it's a categorical kind of request and I might be pursuing a myth - given the silence from supposed corporate SUSE users thus far.
Second:
Why ask a list serve? Contact Novell about becoming a partner. If your company sells enterprise scale linux appliances and services to the financial market, I can gaurantee that Novell will want to partner with you.
Um, I'm a lowly workie in a global company (small-ish, but still well over a thousand employees), and I don't work in Sales, Marketing, or Product Manglement. That is, I don't get to make decisions like that, and I absolutely don't get to make overtures to other companies on behalf of this company. Boy would I get my wrists slapped. So I'm looking for a persuasive argument to present to those people who _do_ make such decisions and actions, to justify additional resources for testing on new-to-us platforms (SLES and the desktop SUSE) prior to each release of our products. I've looked at the Novell site and noted that list of Linux "partners" that they claim, and passed it on to some of our Sales and Sales-Eng people just to test the waters, but anybody in the business world knows that you take lists of "partners" with a grain of salt, especially when the company doesn't specify what (if anything) they are doing with those partners. Am I making any more sense? Or is it just more words and still obscure? :-) Cheers, Kevin (paid for every SuSE release since 5.2 - anticipating 10.1) The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it.