Open Source Weblog

Since it completed the acquisition of SUSE Linux in early 2004, Novell has reported the following Linux-related revenue:

3Q04
$12m
"SUSE Linux business"

4Q04
$12m
"SUSE Linux business"

1Q05
$15m
"SUSE Linux business"
(including $7m
"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server")

2Q05
$8m
"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server"

3Q05
$8m
"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server"

4Q05
$15m
"Linux product and services"

1Q06
$13m
"Linux platform products and other open source products"

Despite the moving goalposts it is clear to see that Novell's Linux business is essentially flat, and pales into comparison with Red Hat's most recent quarterly revenue of $73.1m (up 44% year-on-year).

Hovsepian insists that those figures are misleading however, pointing to a (deliberately) shrinking retail business being offset by a growing enterprise business. "SUSE's momentum was in the retail market, what we've had a chance to do was redirect that to the server and to the enterprise," he told me. "While my [Linux revenue] number might be flat in total it outgrew the market in Europe last year."

It is also worth noting that these figures do not include Novell's Open Enterprise Server product, which contains both NetWare and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and represents the migration path from the former to the latter.

OES generated revenue of $31m in the third quarter of 2005, followed by $46m in the fourth quarter and $43m in the first quarter of this year, and according to Novell's chairman and CEO, Jack Messman, two-thirds of its users have deployed on Linux.

Assuming that figure has been constant across the three quarters the product has been available (which is probably not the case, but at least helps to make a reasonable comparison) that would have given Novell Linux revenue of 2/3 x $43m + $13m in the first quarter, which at $41.7m, makes much better reading in comparison to Red Hat's figures.