rPath on Red Hat's appliance strategy: "Some assembly required"
Why does certification stink so much? Is virtualization a better
answer?  It's not surprising that Billy Marshall, former Red
Hatter and current CEO of rPath, would be dismissive of Red
Hat's new appliance operating system, given that he will be
competing with it. But what I did find surprising is how dead-on
his assessment is of enterprise software.  We talk about
certification a lot (i.e., "Yes, we are certified to run on SQL
Server"). The customer takes this to mean, "It will work well
with SQL Server." But this isn't always the case. In fact, as
Billy points out, it is often not the case:  According to Red
Hat, the product will be a valuable alternative to rPath because
it preserves application "certification." Apparently this means
that customers will still need to assemble, configure, and
maintain the components inside the virtual appliance. After all,
"certification" is only valuable when the components are not
provided as an integrated,