There are 3 easy steps to participate in The Disters, a SUSE Studio contest:

1. Build your appliance using SUSE Studio.
2. Publish your appliance to SUSE Gallery and obtain your URL.
3. Enter your appliance into the contest

You can enter it as a Community Appliance (for stuff you're willing to share freely) or a Commercial Appliance (for stuff you plan to market).

The Disters award contest runs July 27 – September 30, 2010

Get all the details here.

Just like building an appliance with SUSE Studio, entering the competition is easy and free. To get started, visit The Disters homepage.

SUSE Studio is the best way to build Linux-based software appliances. We have over 80,000 users to-date who've collectively built over 400,000 appliances. The competition closes at the end of September – enter and vote today!

You can also catch up on old cloudchasers shows on our blog or iTunes.

About a year ago, the City of Los Angeles decided to migrate all its staff to a new, cloud-based application and collaboration system provided by Google. As the incumbent supplier for collaboration tools, Novell agreed to provide ongoing support to the City to make sure the transition was smooth and that important services weren't disrupted. Delays in implementing the system, largely because of security concerns, mean that Novell is still providing services and support, notably to the City of Los Angeles Police Department. We'll continue to offer support to our customer at the City for as long as it takes, so together we can ensure ongoing, day-to-day operations for all City employees.

Novell is sympathetic to the security and other challenges the City of LA faces. We have an industry-leading security and identity management business that exists to solve just these kinds of challenges, and have over 56,000 customers around the world. Cloud computing offers the promise of lower costs and greater flexibility, but creates new challenges around access control, governance and data security. In survey after survey, security is the leading concern amongst IT executives exploring cloud adoption, which is why leading cloud providers such as Verizon Business have teamed with Novell to offer identity and security services in their cloud offerings.

To support organizations seeking to leverage the opportunities in cloud computing around Collaboration, Novell delivers a compendium of solutions that fit the specific needs of the customer, minimizing painful transitions. These solutions include Novell GroupWise, Novell Teaming, Novell Conferencing and soon-to-be-released Novell Pulse that provides innovative, real-time collaboration services protected by industry leading security and compliance.

The most reliable data source for Linux market share information is IDC, which shows that far from losing share, SUSE is gaining market share across physical, virtual and cloud deployments. Based on IDC's Linux Server Tracker as of April 2010, Ubuntu has less than a 5% unit share of the Linux market, a number that has remained largely unchanged over the last few years. Novell has over 25% market share. The survey highlighted in the TechTarget article asked if a particular OS is being used, not the extent of the use. In other words, a single instance of Ubuntu counted the same as 1,000 instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

The reality is that the Linux market is a two-horse race between Novell and Red Hat, companies that offer very different approaches to the market. There are reasons for Novell's significant share – for example, SUSE Linux Enterprise has over 5,000 certified applications from 1,400 ISVs, while Ubuntu highlights fewer than 30 ISVs on its website (notably absent are mainstays Oracle and SAP) – hardly critical mass.

Canonical has argued that it is leapfrogging established Linux vendors and focusing on the cloud. Nice story. Novell is a leader in cloud computing, thanks to our strong relationships with significant cloud players such as IBM, Fujitsu, Vodacom, Tencent and Verizon. And our landmark agreement with virtualization leader (and future cloud heavyweight) VMware has the potential to change the game.

There are other ways we're changing the game, too. SUSE Studio and our unique SUSE Appliance Program have attracted over 80,000 registered users as well as major-label ISVs like IBM, VMware and SAP. Software appliances make it fast and easy to create and deploy fully-tested, ready-to-run application stacks for both cloud and on-premise deployments. And Novell – unlike Ubuntu – can offer customers added-value capabilities from our broader portfolio such as security and identity management solutions (which, according to the very research cited in the article, is the leading concern of companies that haven't yet considered cloud computing).

While provocative headlines and ambiguous surveys may get attention, the facts tell a different story.

The opportunity to become part of the international openSUSE community is very exciting. There are a great number of interesting developments going on in the free software world, and openSUSE plays a major role in many of them. I look forward to working with the community to help future growth while finding new directions and ways of nurturing and delivering the openSUSE project's innovative technologies to users and developers around the world.

Guest Post from Markus Rex, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Open Platform Solutions.

For those of you who don’t know Dister, he is the mascot for SUSE Studio, a free, web-based appliance building tool that is a key technology component of our SUSE Appliance Program.

Today Dister is a year old and he has a great deal to be proud of. One year ago we announced the SUSE Appliance Program – the industry’s first solution for building and deploying fully-supported software appliances. This launch was very well received by ISVs and the marketplace with ZDnet’s Dana Blankhenhorn reporting, “It may be the most important thing Novell has done for software shops in decades.”

Since that launch, we’ve continued to deliver on the strategy we outlined one year ago. Our more than 80,000 registered SUSE Studio users (including 5,000 ISVs) have built more than 415,000 appliances that have been downloaded an astonishing 3 million times. We’ve expanded relationships with leading technology vendors, including IBM, Ingres and VMware and we have added more product innovations to enhance the program. For a one-year-old, Dister certainly has been busy.

Today we mark another milestone in the SUSE Appliance Program with the launch of SUSE Gallery, an online showcase for publishing software appliances and cloud-based applications and services. The concept behind SUSE Gallery is similar to that of the Apple App Store: developers post their appliances in a venue where end users can browse and download. However, unlike the App Store, all appliances published in SUSE Gallery are free for download and cloning. SUSE Gallery thus provides a friction-free forum for the exchange of ideas, innovation and best practices across all sectors of the software industry.

To jumpstart the Gallery, we’re also launching the first annual “Dister” awards! For appliances built in SUSE Studio and published in SUSE Gallery, we will be awarding $20,000 in prizes to the creators of the most inventive software appliances in two categories: “Community Use” and “Commercial Use”. The competition opens today and is free, so get building and remember to vote on your favorite submissions!

Why is Novell investing so heavily in software appliances? Software appliances are a key component of Novell’s strategy to lead in the intelligent workload management market. Software appliances – pre-configured combinations of an application, middleware and operating system integrated into a single image and tailored to run on industry-standard platforms—are changing the way software developers package and deliver software. Novell realized early on that the flexibility and lower cost of Linux made it the ideal platform for software appliances.

Today, I am happy to celebrate with Dister the successes of the SUSE Appliance Program and the launch of the new SUSE Gallery. I encourage you to check out our free, web-based appliance building tool SUSE Studio and either build your own appliance or vote for your favorite one today!

If you are attending, don´t miss the chance to meet our experts for System z, and visit us at Booth #319. To name just a few, watch out for Kim Lorusso (IBM Alliance Marketing Manager and Cool Blogger), Patrick Quairoli (Technical Alliance Manager), Marcus Kraft (Linux on mainframe "pioneer" and Product Manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z), David Getzin (Partner Executive for IBM), John Jolly (Sys z Architect), and others. Chat with them about the SUSE Linux Enterprise Consolidation Suite tailored for IBM Solution Edition for Enterprise Linux. Don´t know what that is? Read more here: http://www.novell.com/products/systemz/els.html
And get the latest about the new zEnterprise System – you bet that will be one of the "ruling" topics.

Or listen to Mike Friesenegger, one of our most experienced Technical Specialists, when he talks about "ASP.NET on zLinux: A New Workload" (Tues Aug 3, 9:30-10:30AM, Room 305) and about how to " Implement the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension on System z" (Tues Aug 3, 11AM-12PM, Room 208). And you´ll have the opportunity to hear from customers like Nationwide Insurance why and how they use SLES for System z.

And as a side note – for those who have travel constraints and cannot attend personally, SHARE offers the option to participate online – just check out http://www.share.org/Events/UpcomingConference/SHA…

In this PartnerPod, Dan Dufault, director of partner marketing for Novell, interviews Terry Calloway about ConneXcloud, Data Technique’s solution that connects cloud-based applications such as Google's applications suite with existing infrastructures. These connections enable an organization to administer cloud-based application environments seamlessly across all platforms. An identity-based solution built upon Novell Identity Manager, ConneXcloud provides a single point of management for user accounts sharing information across disparate applications.

Novell PartnerPods are periodic podcast interviews demonstrating how Novell PartnerNet members can grow their business and increase profitability using the Novell's portfolio of products and solutions. For more information about Novell’s partner program go to: http://www.novell.com/partners/

Listen to the podcast here:

With server-side synchronization,  Novell Data Synchronizer users can avoid switching between applications manually to keep their data up-to-date in various apps and on multiple devices. Users modify data once and then have access to it anywhere, anytime.  For example, on the sales and marketing front, managers have data at their fingertips from apps and devices tied into an organization’s CRM or other sales management systems. Even the smallest modification, syncs with all systems and  no one misses a beat. At the end of the day this saves users time and reduces IT frustration by providing a central location through which to manage all of an organization’s data.

A few of the key features of Novell Data Synchronizer with GroupWise connector are:

1. Server-side synchronization: As users update information in apps and on mobile devices, the engine stores those changes in real time to allow other connected apps and devices to automatically access that data.
2. Application integration: Integration between enterprise and third-party apps eliminates the need to manually add the same information into multiple systems. Enter data once and multiple apps, devices and users have instant access from anywhere.
3. Many-to-many integration: Synchronization with Novell Data Synchronizer can be achieved from multiple applications to multiple targets.
4. Mobility integration: As users work from their mobile devices, data synchronizes back to their connected applications. Novell GroupWise email, calendars and contacts sync with a variety of mobile devices and operating systems including iPhone, Android, Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile.
5. Extensible and highly configurable: Through Novell Data Synchronizer SDK and open API, administrators can customize existing connectors to fit their environments’ unique needs. These can be used internally in an organization or even provided as third party solutions.

Novell GroupWise users can get Novell Data Synchronizer access immediately with GroupWise connector availability starting today.  Stay tuned for integration with Novell Teaming later this fall.  Be sure to check out www.novell.com/products/data-synchronizer/  and happy synching!