My impression of SuSE
Maybe supporting so many versions with so many patch releases in between is a factor in their inability to generate Linux profit so far. It doesn't really make sense from a business point of view to spread your resources that thinly. Red Hat I think have got the right mix, and they are making money.
SuSE's bigger problem is how do they achieve that mind share tipping point. I've been kicking around this industry now for many years and have seen a slow but increasing shift from proprietary unix solutions that sometimes include a small linux component, to large linux solutions with not a whisker of propriety unix in sight, and it's always Red Hat. In all these years I've yet to bump into a customer who wanted SLES. Maybe it's just marketing, but maybe it's because SuSE seem to go out of their way to make themselves different to the point where mastering their distro as well is just too much of a headache. For example why can't mkinitrd implementations just be the same, they all do the same job. And only just recently I read about Zypper, a SuSE replacement for yum: no thanks!
SuSE have a major case of NIH syndrome and it's really counter productive. The more re-training and re-learning there is involved, the less attractive they are. This is the opposite of Red Hat, where learning RHEL also enables you to use CentOS and Oracle EL with no extra effort needed. I'm not saying they should become an RHEL clone, but just use some common sense and standardize where it adds value to your customers and also reduces your development costs.
Having said all that I'm going to take a good look at what they plan to do with clustering. The technologies they seem to be putting together look very nice. I'm already a big fan of OCFS2: it's very easy and quick to configure and works very well on a SAN or over iSCSI. DRBD8 is a great tool for a low budget shared nothing cluster as well. I imagine they'll probably spoil it all by tying it into Yast though. God I hate that thing. Does it still keep and manage its own copy of essential config files under /etc/SuSEConfig (what the hell is wrong with using /etc/sysconfig like everyone else) and does it still run all over the place checking and "fixing up" elements of the system completely unrelated to the change you just made? Back in earlier SuSE days when I had a go at learning it I had Yast trash a Postfix config once when all I'd done was use Yast to make a change to /etc/hosts. I should have stuck to using vim. I wouldn't let that rubbish behavior loose on any customer of mine, it's a Change Control nightmare.
Anyhow, I'm starting to rant.