Novell News

We’ll be reporting financial results this Thursday, March 2, for our first fiscal quarter 2006. The press release goes out at 4pm ET, and there’s a one-hour conference call with Novell management beginning at 5pm ET. The conference call will be available live as a listen-only webcast at: www.novell.com/company/ir/qresults. The domestic toll-free dial in number is 866-335-5255, password “Novell”. The international dial-in number is +1-706-679-2263, password “Novell”.

Today’s announcement of the Higgins open source identity management project has generated a lot of interest already — from The Boston Globe to eWeek. Several articles have positioned this announcement as a response to Microsoft, although the project obviously has been in the works for a long time. In fact, Higgins is bigger than just one vendor’s effort. It will provide an overall identity framework for different identity systems, including InfoCard. If the Internet has changed the way consumers think about privacy, Higgins may change the way people share personal information online. For example, think about the different types of personal insurance policies a consumer might carry — ranging from medical and life to home and auto. You might be more open to sharing some personal information . . . like an address change. However, details about medical prescriptions should only be seen by your healthcare provider. Higgins will make it easier to share what you want with who you want, giving consumers the power to manage and protect their own identity information and define their relationships with individuals, groups and companies. It’s a new twist on identity management with powerful implications.

Novell has just launched a podcast site we call Novell Open Audio. This will focus primarily on technical level discussions with product managers, engineers and others involved in Novell’s product development. Ted Haeger, who heads up Novell’s user community efforts, is the host. The first podcast includes a look at iFolder with Brady Anderson and Calvin Gaisford and an update on Novell Linux Desktop from Guy Lunardi. Upcoming planned topics include Samba, Banshee and Novell Identity Manager. Needless to say, we’re looking for input on what folks would like to hear about. There’s a mechanism on the site to provide feedback. We hope people find this a good, user-friedly way to get information on things Novell.

This past week, Novell also had a significant presence at both the annual HIMSS meeting and the RSA Conference. Both shows were a great chance to connect with press, analysts, partners and customers.Novell showcased several of its Security & Identity as well as Resource Management products. In addition to the Novell Audit 2 news, we focused on the complexities of managing security and privacy issues in a global economy where regulatory guidance can often differ (and even conflict) country by country. Not surprisingly, identity management was a hot topic at RSA. Vendors long quiet in this space are now beginning to talk up solutions. Microsoft’s demo of its InfoCard got people talking and, as expected, raised the issue of open versus proprietary solutions.

Novell was a sponsor of OSBC (Open Source Business Conference) again this year. I’ve gone to all three of the annual San Francisco events, and they provide a great snapshot into the state of the open source ecosystem. The first year there was a lot of focus on business models and legal issues, with SCO prevalent. Last year, there was a lot of talk about larger tech companies embracing open source approaches, and the success of mid-sized companies like MySQL and JBoss in creating dual-licensing models that seemed to be commercial viable. This year, it was all about the start-ups. The event was crawling with young open source companies: Pentaho, SugarCRM, EnterpriseDB, Jaspersoft, Spikesource, Groundwork, and more. And not surprisingly, the VCs were well represented too. Oracle’s purchase of Sleepycat the morning the conference kicked off was the flashpoint for a recurring theme of the conference: how will open source applications enter the mainstream? Needless to say, there were fairly divergent viewpoints, with the SAP rep suggesting open source business application vendors wouldn’t survive a coming round of consolidation and others arguing that the success of SugarCRM and others was already evidence that open source can deliver up the stack. Novell’s new CTO, Jeff Jaffe, and CMO Bill Hewitt were at the show to meet with press and partners. Nancy Faigen, who heads up Novell’s sales efforts in North America, represented Novell on a panel that included vendors and customers talking about selling Linux into the CxO level. It was clear from that discussion that the question has moved beyond Should I try Linux? to What’s the best way for me to leverage Linux? MIT’s Nick Carr gave an interesting talk about the move toward the utility model of computing, and suggested open source has a critical role to play there. He also saw a future with open and proprietary software combined to create the right vertical stacks for customers. Larry Lessig delivered another one of his great talks about how current laws governing IP, which were developed for an analog world, become counterproductive to innovation in a digital world. If you ever have the chance to see Lessig present, do it.

“In many cases, Linux is likely to be a significantly less expensive platform to acquire and maintain than Windows,” says a study released this week by Enterprise Management Associates. The report, sponsored by OSDL and Levanta, helps confirm what many organizations already know … that Linux is a compelling alternative to Windows. It also provides an oasis of Linux research among the seemingly endless dunes of Microsoft-funded reports.So check out the report itself, and a few stories and comments about it from eWeek, InformationWeek, Linux-Watch and InfoWorld.Feb 16 note added: Read the comment below for Bill Claybrook’s more detailed assessment of this study. Thanks!

HP and Novell are making it easier for customers to take advantage of Linux on HP servers with a new open source bundling license agreement. The Enterprise Linux 8-License Value Pack featuring Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 is a boon for those running or wanting to run a virtualized environment, because a single license is calculated per server rather than per image, so organizations can run multiple instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on the same physical server at no additional charge. The single subscription for all components reduces administrative costs and is flexible for use with up to four processors (single or dual core).It’s a significant combo: premier hardware from HP, secure and scalable SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, and the Enterprise Linux 8-License Value Pack to make it even easier and more cost effective to accept what Linux has to offer.

TheInfoPro just released Wave 6 of its Information Security Study and reported that 72 percent of enterprises cite internal security threats as greater or equal importance to external threats.Study authors also wrote, “Enterprises have been spending heavily on Identity Management and plan to continue to do so. Over 75% will spend more in 2006. Of those, nearly 30 percent expect to spend a minimum of $500,000, with many spending as much as $5 million.”There is no doubt that organizations are seeing real value in identity management.For example with a Novell Security and Identity Solution, Scott & White automated its manual processes for managing digital identities across its entire enterprise, dramatically reducing administration time and keeping overall IT costs flat despite adding nearly 1,000 new staff a year. And according to Lars Line Vaaland, IT manager at Vetco Aibel: “Our new identity management solution reduces redundant manual operation tasks to a minimum. With Novell solutions, global companies like Vetco Aibel become more competitive.”

Europe’s largest independent private bank is running an IBM Grid solution on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to speed up complex calculations and give them more flexibility. Sal. Oppenheim needed more IT infrastructure sophistication to maintain competitive advantage. The head of IT said, “We chose SUSE Linux because of the flexibility we get from Novell compared to other vendors. Novell worked with us on both the technical and contractual sides and gave us better pricing and support options. We could never invest in such a mission-critical system without the right vendor support.” The technology is great, but it’s definitely about more than that …

BusinessWeek continues to be the most engaged of the major weekly business magazines on open source. They’ve got another open source focused special report out this week online that talks about open source beyond Linux, as well as issues like patent reform. Sarah Lacy, who wrote the Novell story a few months back, continues to focus a lot on open source, and wrote several of the articles for this special report. She’s also put up an interesting blog posting on California considering open source. The Massachusetts debate on ODF has created a lot of buzz – and controversy. It would be somewhat ironic if it’s public sector adoption that helps push things like ODF or other open source products mainstream.Keep it up, BusinessWeek!