Novell News

Novell has launched two new Web sites this week to provide more info to customers on … you guessed it, enterprise Linux.

The first, called Make the Move from UNIX to Linux, talks about the rising demands of enterprise computing and the benefits of switching to Linux. Like getting the power, reliability and scalability of UNIX, but paying up to 75 percent less for it.

At the second site, Your Linux is Ready, there are links to white papers, podcasts, blogs and press releases (everybody’s favorite) about Novell’s award-winning SUSE Linux Enterprise 10. And you can hear from Novell open source folks like Nat Friedman, Gerald Pfeifer, Kurt Garloff and Crispin Cowan, discussing all kinds of things related to Linux — including technology and business benefits.

Wondering about the state of virtualization and the issues your organization might face as the technology is more broadly adopted? Then check out the recently posted eWeek IT Link podcast with Novell’s Joe Wagner. Joe sat down and spoke with host Michael Vizard about virtualization’s potential, as well as the management essentials that organizations need for success. Listen to it here.

Nice industry recognition coming today for Markus Rex, a long time SUSE Linux and Novell executive. He’s been appointed by the Linux Foundation to serve at Chief Technology Officer. We’re not losing Markus forever. We’re lending him to the Foundation for awhile (end 2008), because we think he can really help the broader Linux market there. He’s been working on Linux standards for a long time, and was one of the main drivers behind SUSE Linux always being one of of the first distros to comply with the various iterations of the Linux Standards Base. We think he can help energize new standardization efforts, which will be increasingly critical as Linux moves into more demanding data center roles. Needless to say, we look forward to working with Markus and the Linux Foundation to continue to drive that organization’s success.

The City of Saint Paul (Minnesota’s capital, you know) needed a unified e-mail solution to help employees communicate across different departments. Moving to Novell GroupWise running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server gives the City a unified and secure e-mail platform, with 99.9 percent uptime and greater protection against virus attacks. The City of Saint Paul created several user teams to evaluate nearly 10 different e-mail solutions including Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. The agency considered both proprietary and open source solutions before selecting GroupWise to run on its Windows desktops with Linux on the backend.

“Novell GroupWise runs on Linux and that was a key part of our decision,” said Darlene Guy, IS systems consultant for the City of Saint Paul. “Linux is a preferred platform for the City and an essential part of our future.”

Check out more of the story here.

A good SUSE Linux Enterprise win coming out of Italy. The Italian Parliament is going to be tapping SUSE Linux for both servers and desktops. Read about it here.

Most people think of identity management in terms of securing corporate assets and giving employees the tools they need to do their jobs. But identity management delivers benefits for any large organization that has to handle lots of people. And when those people regularly turn over each year, identity management can deliver even more benefits. A recent Novell win in China is a good example.

Southwest University for Nationalities is a multi-disciplinary institute for higher education, serving more than 20,000 students, with more than 1,300 teachers and employees working in 18 institutes and three school districts. With increasing enrollments, the University needed a more efficient way to manage its growing number of user identities and control access to various systems. With an integrated Novell identity, access and systems management solution, the university has streamlined identity management and improved access for all of its users across the organization, while significantly reducing administrative time and costs.

Read more here.

Novell Distinguished Engineer and Bandit Project Leader Dale Olds has posted on his Virtual Soul blog his insights and learnings from the recent Burton Group Catalyst Conference. Dale says the event combined solid technical information with social interaction and humor to make a very potent experience. The speakers’ analysis of industry needs and trends was insightful and useful.

For Dale the highlight of the conference was the user-centric identity interoperability demonstration, where the Bandit Project had entries in the identity provider and relying party functional areas and supported the new DigitalMe identity selector.

Dale’s entire post can be found here.

For a look at how one Novell engineer has grown to embrace open source over the last few years, check out Matt Asay’s recent conversation with Novell senior software engineer, Brad Nicholes, here.

On Friday, June 29, 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the final version of the new GNU Public License, GPLv3. Given the terms of GPLv3, we re-affirm Novell’s ability to include technologies licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3 in SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, and other Novell offerings and to deliver these technologies to our customers. This is good news for our customers, who enjoy using the best engineered and most interoperable Linux platform for mission-critical computing. Novell welcomes and supports GPLv3, and intends to include code licensed under GPLv3 in its distribution.

Shortly after the GPLv3 license was released, Microsoft issued a statement in which they expressed their view that Microsoft is not a party to the GPLv3 and it is therefore not applicable to them. Yesterday, they also articulated that, “to avoid any doubt or legal debate on this issue, Microsoft has decided that the Novell support certificates that we distribute to customers will not entitle the recipient to receive from Novell, or any other party, any subscription for support and updates that includes the receipt of any code licensed under GPLv3.”

Microsoft’s current position, taken unilaterally, is intended to eliminate any perceived ambiguity about the applicability of GPLv3 to Microsoft. Nonetheless and independent of Microsoft’s position, we would like to make clear our commitment to our customers that Novell will continue to distribute SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with its full set of functionality and features, including those components that are licensed under GPLv3.

For those customers who will obtain their Linux via a certificate from Microsoft, Novell will provide them with a regular SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription, regardless of the terms of the certificate provided by Microsoft. Customers who have already received SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates from Microsoft are not affected in any way by this, since their certificates were fully delivered and redeemed prior to the publication of the GPLv3. Novell will continue to put the needs of our customers first and ensure that they can take advantage of the latest version of SUSE Linux Enterprise to run their business.

Novell and Microsoft plan to continue our technical collaboration efforts which include our joint development work on virtualization, standards-based systems management, identity interoperability and document format translators. Regarding the applicability of the covenants not to sue in the Novell-Microsoft agreement and their applicability in a GPLv3 world, our respective customers will continue to have the benefit of those provisions. For Novell customers, all Novell products are covered by the Microsoft covenant not to sue, independent of their channel of distribution, including both server and desktop and whether they are licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3.

Novell is committed to providing the best engineered, best supported and most interoperable Linux distribution for our customers. Customers can remain confident deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server under the Novell–Microsoft agreement. Nothing in the final version of GPLv3 prevents us from maintaining that promise. For us, it’s business as usual.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has called on Novell to centralize and automate identity management across its IT systems. ANSI coordinates the development and use of voluntary consensus standards in the United States and represents the needs and views of U.S. stakeholders in standardization forums around the globe. Representing more than 125,000 companies and 3.5 million professionals, ANSI is implementing Novell Identity Manager and Novell eDirectory to improve data accuracy, free up IT resources and improve user access to information.

Read more about ANSI’s successful identity management deployment here.