I had the great opportunity to speak with a good friend on Cloud Chasers a little over a week ago now on April Fools day. A very good day to catch up with friends and chat about the competition cloud based services are presenting to today's IT organizations. I started my career as an IT outsourcing service provider with virtualized mainframes, I find that what's old is new again in an even more flexible model than previous used.

We've spoken about the shift that IT must make in delivering and communicating service performance, rather than technology performance for many years. The catalyst for change is competition and it is heating up in the market. The service providers know their costs and the value of their services and are bypassing the IT organizations and selling directly to the business. This presents an interesting dynamic – does the business really know how to manage the service provider well? and should the IT organization serve as the gatekeeper?

These are the opposing forces. As new services come to the data center or old ones are updated, the delivery mechanism should be evaluated. Adopting cloud isn't really the objective, but driving business growth is the objective and can a cloud based service deliver a business service for higher business growth, is the question.

Come listen to my friend from across the small pond discuss his thoughts on the topic as a CEO of a cloud based collaboration service for the enterprise on Cloud Chasers.

Michele

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Come check out the Business Service Management Hub for the latest news, commentary and resources on the topic of business service management.

We don't have all the answers, but the bottom line is: MDM is coming. Are you curious? Nervous? An expert? If so, check out this recent blog series  from ZENworks product marketing manager, Justin Strong, which address what is MDM in  Part 1 , accessing your MDM landscape in Part 2, where are the service gaps and threats Part 3 and a little history and what it means for the future in Part 4.

What do you think about MDM and where it is going? There's more to come on MDM, but in the meantime we'd love to hear from you.

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Go here to submit your video and learn more about celebrating the 20th anniversary of Linux.

Some of the interesting topics Novell is helping to tackle include today’s panel: Changing Processes: Hardware Success Stories in the Linux Ecosystem moderated by Greg Kroah-Hartman. And, tomorrow’s talks by James Bottomley on Kernel Development and Lars Marowsky-Brée on High-Availability on Linux.

Camp KDE is co-located with the Collaboration Summit. This event which features in-depth talks by core developers, provides a regional opportunity for KDE contributors and enthusiasts to gather, learn about the latest KDE happenings and share their experiences.

Don't forget to check out the news from the show here and here.  If you’re at the show, tell us about your experience.

This month, the influential industry publication PRWeek recognized the program and wrote a case study about why it was so successful. We're proud of the recognition and thank the thousands of Linux developers who participated (and if you missed it this year don't worry – we're planning a second competition in 2011).

We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the Novell team that worked hard to make the launch of SUSE Gallery and the Disters so great, especially Charlotte Betterley, Peter Bowen, Frank Days, Darren Davis, Jenny Jessop, Liz Padula, Joanna Rosenburg, Cornelius Schumaker, Srinivasen Venkat and PAN Communications. Thanks everyone!

The UNIX vs. Linux debate continues to rage on especially when it comes to applications that require high availability. As I watch the market, I see more and more evidence that Linux is ready to handle the demands for mission-critical computing. Here are some of the more recent trends that make me think that this is true:

1. More high profile users are choosing Linux – We’re seeing more major brands like Office Depot (for officedepot.com), BMW (on its shop floor) or Sony (in its regional data centers) using Linux for high profile workloads.
2. Extended product lifecycles - Linux vendors are offering extended UNIX-like product lifecycles for critical solution stacks.
3. More third party ISVs – A large number of ISVs are porting, certifying and supporting their business applications on Linux. For example, over 600 Oracle applications are certified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, including Oracle Database, business applications (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards), Financial Applications, Project Portfolio Management, and Fusion.
4. New complementary products – Mission-critical functionality is now a core part of the Linux product set. For example, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension supports high availability and disaster recovery needs.
5. Mission-critical features in commercial Linux distributions – For example, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 exposes the mission-critical features in the latest x86 processors, like the Intel Xeon Processor E7 family. Things like machine check architecture recovery, double data device correction, and Intel Trusted Execution Technology.

Earlier today, Intel announced an update to its Xeon processor line called “E7”. As an Intel partner, we were please to see their ongoing support of open source and willingness to add functionality that makes the combined solution an effective option for organizations with mission critical applications. Check out their press release for more details.

What evidence are you seeing that Linux is ready to handle these mission-critical applications?