Novell News

Finding a way to link physical and logical security access and comply
with HSPD‑12 is top of mind for many government organizations. Honeywell
and Novell are demonstrating a unique way to do this at the TechSec
Solutions conference happening now in Dallas. In the demo, Honeywell
manages the physical access control system (alarm monitoring, badging
systems), which is linked to Novell’s Identity Manager solution for
logical access management (user identities, authorizing access control).

We’ve been working with Honeywell for a while now, and this identity
assurance solution that’s being demoed at TechSec is one of things we
have been able to accomplish. Linking physical and logical access is
critical for today’s enterprise organizations and Honeywell and Novell
are working hard to provide practical solutions.

Dell’s IdeaStorm site is certainly generating what its name implies, and we’re happy to see the top ideas involve pre-installed desktop Linux. You’ve probably already written or read stories about it, like these in BusinessWeek, Computerworld and DesktopLinux.com.

And Dell’s responding, posting an update on Linux options, specifically mentioning “We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux …” We are indeed working with Dell to make it as simple as possible for customers to acquire and use the top enterprise Linux desktop available … yes, that’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.

Those virus writers have no heart. Or maybe a warped sense of humor. News reports of viruses designed to trip up the lovelorn were making the rounds yesterday on Valentine’s Day. Fortunately, on a happier note, there are good things going on in the identity and security space, at least at Novell. I’m happy to report that Sentinel, Novell’s flagship security information and event management solution, has achieved Common Criteria Certification Evaluation Level 2 (EAL‑2) for its comprehensive security management features. This is a significant achievement as it means that Sentinel, which provides real‑time event monitoring and visibility across IT environments, is giving its worldwide customers a higher level of security protection.

The certification was received from the respected National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS) Validation Body. CCEVS evaluates IT products for conformance to the International Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation. The rigorous process includes evaluation for various features, such as development environment, security functionality, the handling of security vulnerabilities, security‑related documentation and product testing.

For customers, the good news is that Common Criteria offers a standardized way of expressing security requirements, making it easier to evaluate the quality of security products. For security vendors, Common Criteria is good because it is widely accepted as a “seal‑of‑approval” for mission‑critical software by US and international IT professionals, government agencies, enterprise and other business customers.

Achieving Common Criteria is just one more proof point that Sentinel’s global customers are purchasing a high‑quality event management solution.

It’s been a big news week for Novell, with a lot of focus on virtualization. If you didn’t catch the Infoworld Virtualization Executive Forum, they’re archiving presentations here. Carlos Montero-Luque, our VP of product management for Open Platform Solutions, presented in conjunction with Microsoft on our technical collaboration announcement from Monday.

That announcement was just one of several cool bits of news this week with partners. We put out another release Monday with Intel about virtualizing Windows2000/2003/XP Server unmodified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 via Xen. Today we unveiled some new workgroup teaming and real-time collaboration work we’re doing with SiteScape. In addition, IBM put out a couple of announcements today involving Novell, one on the Integrated Stack for SUSE Linux Enterprise running on IBM System p servers, and another about work Novell, AMD and IBM are doing together around IBM’s Informyx Dynamic Server (codename “Cheetah”). This latter will combine IDS Cheetah, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM xSeries 3105 servers, running on AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors, for an small/medium sized business solution focused on security and high availability.

Five announcements in three days involving Novell’s work with IBM, Microsoft, Intel, AMD and SiteScape… That’s nice cross-platform industry validation for Novell’s offerings. It’s good to have friends..

I went to a gig in San Francisco last night on corporate blogging. Mauro Lupi, one of Italy’s best known and earliest bloggers, moderated a panel which included folks from Six Apart, the company behind the leading blog software, StucturedWikis, and Spada, Inc. The focus was on why companies should blog, measuring the impact of blogs, and new blogging technologies that allow increasing sophisticated blogs (i.e., with audio/video/multimedia) to be easily developed.

Lupi’s list of keys for successful corporate blogging started with passion for the subject, talking to people (not ‘consumers’), and being credible. While this blog may not always exhibit the flair of other blogs (hey, we’re still PR folks operating within a public company environment!), we do believe in what we’re doing, and we certainly are striving for openness and credibility. Based on conversations in the room last night, it sounds to me like Novell is still relatively forward leaning on the blogging front relative to many other companies, with our combination of two executive blogs (our CMO and CTO), this OpenPR blog, and a series of product focused blogs on our Cool Blogs site. Not that we can’t do better, but we’re out there.

One of my hopes for 2007 is that we can engage folks more on interaction with this blog. The burden is on us to come up with interesting topics. With everything that’s moving in our markets, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Press continues to swirl around the Reuters piece out Friday whether Novell will suddenly be banned from shipping Linux by the Free Software Foundation. John Dragoon put up a blog post over the weekend on this issue. A number of subsequent stories, mostly in Linux-focused publications, suggest why such a ban isn’t in the cards. (See Linux-Watch, Linux Magazine and ITWire). A few main issues to keep in mind:

1. The Free Software Foundation has never threatened to try to ban Novell, or anyone else, from shipping Linux. The FSF has expressed that it doesn’t much like the Novell-Microsoft agreement, and that the next version of the GPL3 may try to address some of the the issues raised by the agreement. But Richard Stallman of the FSF has publicly said there’s no violation of the GPL2.
2. SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is a shipping product, and it includes pieces licensed under GPL2. We’ll continue to be able to ship, maintain, secure, and patch those pieces of the product under the terms of GPL2. There is no reason for customers not to deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise 10.
3. The GPL 3 process is ongoing. Novell continues to participate in discussions with the FSF and the other vendors involved in the process. We are not prepared to pronounce on possible outcomes to that process, and what they mean for SUSE Linux. That would be pure speculation at this stage, and would only serve to muddy the waters. When GPL3 is finalized and made public, we’ll assess it and determine our actions at that point. Given the likelihood that a number of projects will continue to be licensed under GPL2, and not go to GPL3, most vendors involved in open source will be facing similar assessments.

We are, and will remain, big fans of Linux. Our agreement with Microsoft is designed to promote Linux adoption by new customers, not divide the Linux community.

By way of introduction, I am Charlotte Betterley, the newest PR Manager for Novell, handling identity and security management solutions. It’s the start of week three for me at Novell, with the past couple of weeks spent taking a deep dive (or that might be a belly flop) into the world of open source and identity and security management. I’m really pleased to be joining Novell at this time for a couple of reasons:
1) While PR objectives haven’t really changed (increase awareness! sell products!), the methods of distribution and targeting have. Nowadays, PR is not only about making sure your press release and pitches get to the right journalist, its also about engaging customers, partners and the community directly, through communication vehicles like this blog.
2) Effectively managing security and controlling identity access over multiple platforms are top challenges faced by businesses today. As Novell is one of the leading providers of solutions for the security market, I’m confident I’ll be kept busy bringing you all the latest news and updates on our comprehensive suite of identity and security management products. Just this morning, we announced a preview of enhancements to our flagship security and identity management solutions, Sentinel(TM) 6 and Identity Manager 3.5, at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

Info Security Products Guide has recognized Novell as an industry leader in identity and security management. After reviewing more than 500 information security vendors worldwide, Info Security Products Guide named Novell as one of its Security “Hot Companies” for 2007. Novell received the award thanks to its suite of identity and security management products, including Identity Manager, Access Manager and Sentinel. The rigorous selection process was based on the 4P criteria–Products, People, Performance and Potential–all key elements behind Novell’s growing success in the security space.

According to the Info Security Products Guide Managing editor Rake Narang, “Vendors that are building their success strategy on the 4Ps are the ones that are best positioned to keep your digital resources secured in 2007.” We’re forced to agree with Rake.

Building on recent news, like this week’s significant milestone achieved with the Bandit and Eclipse Higgins projects, this is just one more proof point that Novell’s identity and security solutions continue their forward momentum…