PROVO, UT — July 26, 2001 — Novell today announced strategic development partners and leading solution vendors Computer Associates, CaminoSoft, Legato, St. Bernard, Symantec and Veritas just completed an intensive five-day workshop designed to promote and ensure standards-based interoperability with Novell's NetWare 6.
The workshop, dubbed "PlugFest," was hosted by Novell July 16-20 at its Provo, Utah, campus and was the second in a series of NetWare 6 pre-release testing events for Novell's strategic development partners. This invitation-only PlugFest was hosted specifically for key Novell partners that supply backup, anti-virus, hierarchical storage management (HSM) and open file management solutions for NetWare. PlugFest events provide convenient pre-configured test combinations and advanced interoperability and compatibility testing, allow participating vendors to ensure their products will work with NetWare 6 and in combination with other vendor solutions.
PlugFest provided vendors with pre-release application testing and debugging support on NetWare 6, as well as access to Novell engineers to help solve configuration issues. PlugFest also provided an early opportunity for partners to begin testing to receive Novell's "Yes, Tested and Approved" product compatibility certification. Vendors had the opportunity to meet other solution providers face to face to resolve compatibility issues and learn how their newest products will interact in the marketplace.
"The NetWare 6 PlugFest is an excellent example of how Novell works tirelessly to foster the vendor cooperation that is driving adoption of open standards and interoperability in the marketplace - which ultimately benefits all customers who need to integrate and extend their networking infrastructures," said Carleton Watkins, director of Worldwide Developer Support for Novell. "For example, NetWare 6 will provide its customers with open network infrastructure that can communicate with Net devices using standard protocols. Novell extended the invitation to its strategic development partners with the idea of not only testing the compatibility of their solutions with NetWare 6, but also running smoothly together."
During PlugFest, vendors tested their solutions for compatibility with NetWare 6 and Novell NDS eDirectory using LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and other industry standards. First, server application vendors tested versions of their latest backup, anti-virus and storage/file-management products. Then application vendors were given the opportunity to test their products running together on the NetWare 6 platform. Following the testing, application vendors were encouraged to apply for the "Yes, Tested and Approved" certification (see http://developer.novell.com/yespgm for more information). Certification is one of several programs offered to the 132,000 members of Novell's DeveloperNet to help partners provide higher quality, more stable products to the one Net solutions market.
Press Contact:
Kevan Barney
Novell, Inc.
Phone: (801) 861-2931
E-mail: kbarney@novell.com
