Novell News

Well, 2006 is ending, and it’s been a pretty interesting year for Novell. As always, we’ve rolled out some great products – SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, both server and desktop, Access Manager 3, Sentinel, and new ZENworks tools for data center automation, among others. We had some signficant management changes, including Ron Hovsepian taking the top slot, Jeff Jaffe joining Novell as our chief technology officer, and John Dragoon moving internally to take over marketing. We had a nice nod to Nat Friedman, our lead desktop strategist and engineer, who was named VARBusiness’s first ever Technologist of the Year. We made some acquisitions – eSecurity – and divestitures – Celerant. And we signed some great partnerships, including with Dell for Linux management, with IBM for an integrated stack for SUSE Linux Enterprise and, most recently, with Microsoft on Windows/Linux interoperability. Novell certainly can’t be accused of standing still in 2006!

We’re looking forward to 2007. We expect to build on the early momentum around the Microsoft deal illustrated by our announcement earlier this month of wins with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and AIG Technologies. This agreement is a real agreement, with real results already, not just a paper deal. We’re excited about our recent new solutions for managing and automating data centers, including virtual enviroments, and we hope to accelerate momentum in that arena. And we’ll continue to lead the industry in leveraging our long history of security and identity management to deliver new solutions to secure and manage heterogeneous environments.

We’ve got the right strategy, products, leadership, and marketing and we’re focused on execution. We look forward to continuing the discussion on Novell’s progress with you as we move into 2007.

The beta code of Novell’s next generation ZENworks for device management, code named ‘Pulsar,’ is now available for testing.

Pulsar is a complete device management product for Windows desktop customers who are looking to get the most out of their desktop investment from Vista or earlier versions. It is the only solution that can run on a cross-platform backend (Windows, Linux) giving users the ability to manage from desktop-to-data center regardless of the platform they use. Other new features include greater ease of use, an all new user interface, wizards, and streamlined tasks.

This next generation release of ZENworks will be a hot topic at Novell’s BrainShare 2007 event in Salt Lake City in March. However, for those who can’t wait until then and might be interested in participating in the beta review, please visit our Cool Solutions page here.

Guest Blog from Gil Cattelain, Novell ZENworks Product Marketing, on the BrainStormer Christmas Update in the UK

I’ve just returned from last week’s BrainStormer Christmas Update/ZENworks Summit held at the prestigious University of Oxford in England. This year approximately 55 educational ZENworks customers (universities) attended the event. Various ZENworks sessions were offered covering everything from asset to desktop to Linux management to Novell’s next release of ZENworks, code named “Brimstone.”

In order to provide maximum flexibility for the delegates, the event was split into three self-contained days covering ZENworks, identity and security solutions and Linux. This year we were very pleased that a number of organizations kindly agreed to present their real-world experiences using Novell technology, in addition to the expert speakers who were at the event, including Novell’s Martin Buckley, Mark Schouls and Laurence Pitt.

All of the slides for the event are available at the following links:

• IDM Day
• ZENworks Day
• Linux Day

This will be the last big event for the ZENworks team this calendar year, but we look forward to many exciting events and conferences in 2007.

I hope you have a great holiday break and best wishes for the New Year!

There’s an interesting trend on display at DistroWatch.com. DistroWatch tracks average page hits per day for Linux distributions, and for last 30 days, openSUSE has jumped into the top spot, from its typical place in second. The popularity margin is even greater when you look at the last seven days.

Undoubtedly, the release of openSUSE 10.2 has a lot to do with that jump, but it’s also great evidence that openSUSE is still a top distribution, important to the community and to Linux users, despite a few predictions that openSUSE would lose support based on the dissatisfaction of some with Novell’s recent agreement with Microsoft. It also shows that openSUSE is not just about Novell, but about a broad community of developers and contributors who are committed to delivering the top Linux distribution for promoting the use of Linux everywhere, especially among traditionally non-technical audiences.

Eric Savitz has blogged on the Barron’s Daily Tech Trader blog about a survey done by Pacific Crest asking companies about the recent Oracle commitment to offer support for Red Hat Linux and the Novell/Microsoft agreement on Windows/Linux interoperability. I haven’t seen the study, so I’ll lift from Eric’s conclusion’s directly:

“One, most customers are seriously considering the new offerings. Two, Red Hat can hold on to most of them, if they are willing to cut prices far enough. And three, customers seem a little more interested in the Microsoft/Novell offerings than those from Oracle.”

One of the details Eric provides: “Asked who they would chose as a provider if they were to switch Linux support, 29% of Red Hat customers named Microsoft/Novell; 20% named Oracle.”

This shows a market in motion, with price competition and customers considering options they didn’t have a couple of months back. That’s good for customers and, ultimately, for Linux, since it will drive all of the players to improve their offerings.