Desktop Linux: Novell leads from the front

So why just 90 percent of the company - what is the other 10 percent doing?
So, right now there are a few functional issues such as Excel Macros that are not supported in OpenOffice quite as well as we'd like but we know that there is work on the way to close that gap. I think as we go ahead with this we will find little pockets where it just doesn't make sense to migrate for the sake of it.

Ok - so what's the timeframe to migrate off of Windows onto the Linux desktop?
So, our next big milestone is to get 50 percent of the organisation over to the Linux desktop by the end of October 2004. We are again tracking really well with that and have got a large core of users internally who have already made that leap. We also created an early adopter program with our hardcore technology people at the end of last year - actually before the Suse acquisition so I guess I read the tea leaves right on that one. We started the early adopter programme last October to seek volunteers to actually work with us --- we've got about a 1,000 people on board at the moment -- and again it is going really well and I think we have identified a lot of the application issues.

So roughly how many desktops are there in Novell?
Well being a very technical company we have about two-point-something machines per person - which is not typical of a traditional enterprise but it's still going well.

One of the things I talk to CIOs about is critical success factors and right now one of those is not to treat it like a traditional IT project. For me the reason not to treat it like a traditional project is that on a usual project then the IT team would be off for six to nine months really testing everything. For this what we did was say 'Join with us', this is a disruptive technology without an established road-map so we need volunteers to help weather some of the initial stages.

How much is the migration a marketing decision and how much is it really about technology?
I have spent most of my career working for non-technical companies, so would I have done this migration if I didn't work for Novell? Well, yes but I would have probably done it differently. I would probably have done a bigger pilot project but only because we are still at the very early part of the development curve of the technology.

But who made the decision to go with this migration - Jack Messman?
Well that would be the perception but we started the early adopter programme last year without Jack and before we bought SuSE.

Is the long-term aim of this project to get to a point where there is no Microsoft software being used in Novell?
We are a cross-platform provider and as such we continue to use Microsoft software and the desktop is an important part of that. I think for our customers who are continuing to use Microsoft desktop and maybe using Zenworks as part of their solution, it's important that we continue to reassure them that we are supporting that.