[ Thanks to Mark
Gargiulo for this link. ]
“Red Hat, whose business model has historically been viewed as
channel unfriendly, only recently signed its first reselling deal,
with IBM Global Services. In contrast, UnitedLinux vendors have
thousands of partners worldwide.“Some view the UnitedLinux alliance as a desperate attempt to
prevent the same kind of fragmentation that splintered the Unix
world and block Red Hat–already the market leader with more than
50 percent share of the server market–from becoming the Microsoft
of the Linux world.“But UnitedLinux has an advantage today: It debuts at a time
when the channel is increasingly viewed as a more viable model for
driving Linux business. In recent months, for example, traditional
services-oriented Red Hat has reversed course and sculpted a new
business model based on driving the ‘majority’ of its services
business through the channel, while reaping revenue from its server
software, Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik told CRN recently…”