NetworkWorld is running a good article on the competition between Novell and Red Hat in the Linux marketplace and how for once Novell may not be the worst marketing department in the game. The article makes some good points, Red Hat largely has its dominant position in the Linux market through being first and not because of tremendous marketing initiative or product direction. In fact for the last couple of years it kind of feels like they have been stationery bystanders compared to the frenetic activity within the Novell and Ubuntu camps recently.
The unfortunate thing is that because both companies are so bad at marketing they do not stand to get any better by competing against each other. The Novell/Red Hat stand-off will just boil down to who can get across the cloudiest, lest cohesive message about Linux to any poor soul who cares to listen. Meanwhile the bulk of the marketing will still have to be done by the IT consultants and technicians within the industry. This is just wrong when you consider how little IT staff need to market Microsoft products to management, in fact in these situations I would say the bulk of IT staff time is spent explaining to management why Microsoft is not a good choice.
It is funny to think that if Microsoft was not so tied to the idea of a 'Windows' platform they could wipe the floor with Novell and Red Hat if they were to release their own, well-branded and marketed Linux distribution. It would not take much effort and through careful product alignment they could easily position it within their existing Windows thin-client and Windows Server lineups. Fortunately for Novell, Red Hat and the general open source community there is a snowballs chance in hell of this happening but its an interesting thought none the less...