Novell News

Imagine a world where shopping online or accessing your favorite website was as easy as clicking on one of a few digital identity cards stored on your computer? Similar to how you pull your wallet out and select a card in the physical world to buy groceries or verify your age at a restaurant. No need to store hundreds of passwords or worry that your credit card information could be stolen from an online retailer that’s storing your financial information. This might sound too good to be true, but the technology exists today to enable a simpler and more secure Internet experience.

Information cards are a representation of a digital identity which can be shared with any number of online entities, letting people click-in to sites and share only the information needed to conduct a specific transaction. Yesterday, the formation of the Information Card Foundation (ICF) was officially announced, with articles appearing online in publications such as CNET News and the New York Times. The ICF was established to promote the rapid build-out and adoption of Internet-enabled digital identities using Information Cards.

Novell is one of the founding members of the ICF, along with Equifax, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, PayPal and nine leaders in the technology community. The ICF aligns nicely with our work around the open source identity Bandit project and our DigitalMe information card selector.

Quick, late introductions – I’m Ian Bruce, the new director of PR at Novell. I’ve taken over from Bruce Lowry (being called ‘Bruce’ is a requirement for the job), who held the position for over 8 years and did amazing work driving visibility and awareness for Novell. A testament to his achievements are the kind words from Matt Asay and others. Bruce has gone on to work for the non-profit Skoll Foundation, which invests in social entrepreneurship around the world, and we wish him well.

I say this is a ‘late’ introduction because I’ve been in the new job for all of three weeks. It’s been a whirlwind, with a string of great news beginning with our 2Q results, the announcement of some exciting work with partners like VMWare and MSI, and then late last week the release of openSUSE 11.0. I’ve worked at early-stage start-ups as well as industry giants, but Novell is easily the most energetic company I’m come across. Never a dull moment – I’ll be posting more soon.

IT managers looking to ensure server continuity and save time and money from working on repetitive and labor-intensive tasks, will welcome the newest version of Novell ZENworks Orchestrator data center management software. Shipping now, Orchestrator automates operations so IT tasks are done consistently and according to policy, and helps keeps data center resources, both physical and virtual, working together and focused on business priorities. This latest version features high availability, where if a server in a configured cluster goes down, another server goes online to take its place. Also included are new tools for virtualization and tons of other features to help keep a data center running smoothly. More information on all the new features and how to obtain Orchestrator is available here.