Blog Entry

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I want to share with you some significant changes to our demo systems that will result in a better, more compelling, more effective demo experience for everyone. The changes are in several areas and while some have already begun, others will take a few months to complete.

1. The people who deliver the Utopia Demo System and the NODS online hosting systems have combined into a single team. We are called Novell Demo Systems and we are part of Global Channels Enablement under Ladd Timpson. As we integrate the teams we will be seeking to unify, streamline, and simplify your experience as a demo user. In the future whether you enter the system via our documentation, download site, or NODS you will have a consistent interface and will be able to easily access all our resources with a single login to a single url.

2. Thanks to the tenacious efforts of Kevin Smith I am delighted to announce that we have finally solved the problem of sharing Utopia vm's running Microsoft Windows with partners. As members of the Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program we now have a process whereby we can create special Windows virtual machine images as part of Utopia that will ship with Microsoft eval licences. This will involve two important changes:

a) over time we will move from Employee Edition & Partner Edition to a single standard Utopia DVD kit that is the same for all users
b) This will mean you will no longer have to worry about using the Partner Tools methodology and build your own Windows vm's. Instead you can just unzip and launch ours, then activate them using your own TechNet or MSDN subscripion.

3. We will be re-designing the kit, the documentation, and the NODS portal around Novell's new positioning, so you can expect to see Utopia demos categorized by Focus Area and the eight solutions as we move into 2009.

4. Finally we will be moving our documentation off the partner wiki and onto another system over the next few months. We'll do our best to make the transition as unobtrusive as possible, but some dust and falling brickwork is inevitable! I hope you will bear with us.

Chris

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.