Linuxcare Reincarnated as Levanta 71
ches_grin writes "BusinessWeek is running a nice profile on Levanta, the former dot-com poster child once known as Linuxcare. From the article: 'It's not that Matt Mosman has an easy job. As Linux continues its march deeper into Corporate America's racks and racks of servers, his small Silicon Valley company, Levanta, is one of many trying to help companies install and manage all those servers--a big, complex problem that's not being solved very well right now. Still, Mosman has one thing going for him: He can't do much worse than his predecessors.'"
First step with the company.. (Score:3, Funny)
but what we all really want to know is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:but what we all really want to know is... (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:1, Flamebait)
"Levanta" is also Spanish (Score:1)
Oh and the million people in San Jose, Costa Rica might argue that your statement doesn't make any sense.
Re:"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:2)
Re:"Levanta" is Argentine spanish (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Levanta" is Portuguese (Score:2)
Re:Jesus. (Score:4, Insightful)
As if it mattered whether or not it was a Microsoft-centric approach.
Most customers don't actually care as much what the solution consists of -- Microsoft, Open Source, "Free" Software, whatever -- what they want are the following:
If you have these things covered, it won't matter to the vast majority of customers what vendor(s) you use. Linux, Windows, Mac, whatever -- as long as it does what the customer needs and fits the above criteria, customers will flock to your solutions and pay you well.
Re:Jesus. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jesus. (Score:1)
Re:Bzzztt!! (Score:2)
This is why ISVs love MSFT and Linux will not gain traction anywhere but Lar
Re:Bzzztt!! (Score:2)
It's about how you presented it. Don't present it as 'free software'. Become a Red Hat channel partner and SELL the stuff. People equate free with "cheesy". But when they pay for it (even if it is something they could have acquired for free) they get a warm fuzzy feeling that they are being supported and, more importantly, there's someone to sue.
It's the approach I've used and I've actually sold people 'free' software solutions, they just didn't know they were free software.
Re:Jesus. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
To me, too. Levanta definitely sounds like something from a drug ad where there's soft fuzzy lighting and Really Pleasant Music playing. But LinuxCare has this homeopathic quality to it that I don't like... is Linux sick?
Re:Jesus. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a spanish spoker (as you can see i don't write englsih well) and i'm wondering why, when english people choose a name for his creations, never check if the name as another significate in other languajes, for example Levanta or, the worst one, "inkulator" than sound in latin as "inculator", that means "ass fucker"
BTW:
"no se me levanta", spanish phrase that means
Re:Jesus. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
Just like Levitra [levitra.com].
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
sense, both functionally and in terms of getting erections. But for a tech company???
Do their servers need motivation to stay up?
Re:Jesus. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying it's right to associate them with that, it's not entirely their fault they fell apart, but that's a perception that many hold regarding them. The name needed to change.
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
Why?
Frankly, they were con artists. SOWs, unless they are 20 pages long, tend to lay out the principal of work involved. They tend to indicate what the desired outcome is. LinuxCare thinks that a two page SoW (for $100k of work) is a contract, not a statement of work. They think that unless every specific piece of work and coding is listed there, they did not agree to perform said work. This is regardless of verbal meetings prior to the SoW that back up said work.
Ju
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
Re:Jesus. (Score:2, Funny)
New-age marketing is all about obfuscation and suggestion. A name should not confer facts - it just stimulate feelings that are reinforced by underlying suggestions in ads.
"I took a couple of Levanta ('cause I asked my doctor if I needed it), this morning. Then I called my broker at Levanta. After that, I read a letter from my HMO, Levanta and a bill form my cel
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
Re:Jesus. (Score:2)
Lowest price for Levanta! (Score:5, Funny)
Glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought I'd be getting spams saying: L3van7a at l0w lovv pr1ce5
Re:Lowest price for Levanta! (Score:2, Funny)
My doctor said Levanta (Score:4, Informative)
Re:My doctor said Levanta (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:My doctor said Levanta (Score:2)
Re:My doctor said Levanta (Score:2)
It's a good name (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a good name (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a good name (Score:1)
Re:It's a good name (Score:2)
Microsoft has a solution for that. And it's blue as well.
Re:It's a good name (Score:1)
There's already a company that is doing this, they call themselves Liagra.
*Ducks*
Re:It's a good name (Score:1)
Re:It's a good name (Score:1)
Re:It's a good name (Score:2)
wow (Score:2)
Interesting idea (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen Levanta's ads in Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] before. Besides the silly name, it sounds like a pretty interesting premise--remote administration, deployment, and management of servers. I don't know how well it actually works, or how painful the integration with the managed servers is, but it certainly sounds cool.
How it works (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who, like me, are wondering about how the Levanta Intrepid (the actual box) can remotely manage servers with such "precision"... I looked it up on their website.
Basically, all of the servers that are managed by the Intrepid are set up to network boot, and use network disks. So the Intrepid controls the kernel they boot with and their filesystems. This gives it the ability to install or uninstall software behind-the-scenes, as well as make byte-level backups of servers and transition them to other machines (simply by switching around which server boots to which disk).
To me, at least, this seems quite clever.
Re:How it works (Score:1, Offtopic)
and just WHO do you think you are?
we are the slashdot, we don't look at website, we don't read articles
we "debate" without facts!
ghee, get a grip
Re:How it works (Score:2)
Nothing surprising there. This is just how a Beowulf cluster is provisioned and maintained. For more info, see Penguin Computing/Scyld.
Someone please refresh our memories (Score:4, Informative)
If LinuxCare left any mark on the world, tt's a poster child of bad-behavior of VCs and the importance of founders keeping in control when negotiating with them.
Someone with a clearer memory than me, and hopefully references, please fill in the details.
Re:Someone please refresh our memories (Score:1)
At one time there where around 300 really smart people working there, wi
Re:Someone please refresh our memories (Score:1)
Our 4/1 joke of ReRover.com was, and still is I think, the best ever...
check it out on wayback...
strange thing is.. it isn't a joke anymore.. it's reality..
ReRover. It's a Dog's life. Again.
Here's what Levanta does (Score:2, Informative)
Levanta? (Score:1, Redundant)
This is not an endorsement (Score:3, Interesting)
doing better than an unmitigated disaster does not make you successful.
I used to work for LinuxCare... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I used to work for LinuxCare... (Score:3, Informative)
(Dang, I'm so used to Wiki...)
I used to work for LinuxCare, from January 2000 to Sept 2003. I have to say, to was a wild ride.
At the 'LinuxCare' phase, I mostly did contract work to write Linux device drivers for 3rd parties. (Including some absolutely evil stuff like a C++ stub for kernel modules, and a 'look like NT' wrapper for a MPEG encoder kernel module.)
In early 2000, we moved into our 'new' offices (we took up the entire basement of the huge converted warehouse building we were in), and had 'The Wo
Re:I used to work for LinuxCare... (Score:1)
Re:I used to work for LinuxCare... (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps, because I am a current employee, my perspective is more skewed, but my recollections of the chain of events is different from yours.
Avery Lyford was hired as CEO in September of 2001. He hired Art Olbert from IBM in October and Akmal Khan from SGI in January of 2002.
Art started the original Linuxcare product that was later code-named "Odin" using the pe
If you experience... (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't India Already Doing This? (Score:1)