Novell News » Kevan Barney

SAP, HP, IBM and SUSE Linux Enterprise

Kevan Barney — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:49:40 +0000

Earlier this week, SAP announced additional Business All-in-One solutions, this time partnering with HP and IBM. Details on specific configurations with each partner are listed in those announcements, but a common thread is the SAP Business All-in-One solutions are based on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell. The integrated solutions are targeted at small to midsize enterprises to simplify deployment and lower costs.

Another NASA supercomputer with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Kevan Barney — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:45:29 +0000

NASA is getting its next supercomputer from SGI, specifically a 20,480-core SGI Altix ICE system, for those of you thinking of maybe getting one for the family. As you might have guessed, it will run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

NASA's new supercomputer will be one of the largest SGI Altix ICE systems ever deployed, joining the State of New Mexico's Encanto, a 14,336-core SGI Altix ICE system which is currently ranked as the third most powerful supercomputer in the world. And yes, it also runs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

OpenSolaris and Linux

Kevan Barney — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:19:06 +0000

You may have seen that Sun announced the availability of OpenSolaris yesterday. For some informed perspective on how OpenSolaris and Sun relate to the Linux community, check out openSUSE community manager Joe Brockmeier's take on the issue. Zonker was speaking at Sun's CommunityOne conference yesterday and offers a thoughtful view.

Next up: retiring the jersey

Kevan Barney — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:33:00 +0000

Novell is in the Hall – the Association of Support Professionals (ASP) Web Support Hall of Fame. Novell is in based on being named a winner in ASP's "Ten Best Web Support Sites" competition for 2008. It's Novell's fourth "Ten Best" finish, putting us in the Hall of Fame.

ASP's "Ten Best Web Support Sites" is a prestigious award that showcases excellence in online service and support. Sites were judged on usability, design, knowledgebase and search, interactive features, and customer experience, among other criteria. Check out Novell's support site and judge for yourself.

Sesame Workshop counts fewer servers, lower costs

Kevan Barney — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:18:38 +0000

In CIO magazine today, Sesame Workshop's Noah Broadwater discusses at some length the benefits his organization is seeing from virtualization using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with its built-in Xen hypervisor.

From the story:

"Sesame Workshop had been spending approximately $250,000 every three years on hardware and support for its Sun Solaris servers, Broadwater says. The new approach combined 25 virtual machines onto 4 physical servers within a blade center and reduced that cost to $24,000 every 3 years, he says. Broadwater's team also consolidated 10 servers including application, image and log servers onto 4 physical boxes. When done with its virtualization effort, the company will reclaim 2 racks worth of space in its already cramped data center, and reduce power consumption by 15 percent, Broadwater estimates."

As the CIO story headline says, those are some monster savings.

New Novell.com

Kevan Barney — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:12:49 +0000

Have you checked out the newly redesigned Novell.com? It has undergone a significant transformation to showcase Novell and its offerings in a dynamic interface designed to encourage exploration. You'll immediately notice a few dramatic changes. The site uses wider templates and a larger font size to improve readability and allow more useful information to appear on the page. And the site has been tuned to work well on all major browsers and operating systems to accommodate the entire marketplace.

Over the past few years we have been steadily transforming our corporate Web site from a static, one-way site that simply provides information to an interactive site that should be more useful to customers and others. That applies to the online pressroom, too. Let us know if you like the changes … or not.

BrainShare and SLED pre-load with HP

Kevan Barney — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:41:39 +0000

Novell's BrainShare is happening this week, and we've pushed out some significant news. You can check out all the announcements plus the keynotes and press conference here.

In other news, you may have seen stories about Novell entering into an agreement with HP to pre-load SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on HP PCs and notebooks. You can read about that here and here.

SAP, Intel and Novell

Kevan Barney — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:28:50 +0000

In case you missed it, SAP today announced an expansion of its partnership with Intel to introduce a pre-configured offering on Xeon-based systems. The offering is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell and the SAP MaxDB database. This is good news for midsize companies in the manufacturing, service and trade industries looking to cut costs and simplify deployment.

SAP and Novell continue to work closely together. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is recommended by SAP, which uses it as an internal development platform for SAP applications.

Green in springtime

Kevan Barney — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:26:08 +0000

Novell has just joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative unites industry, consumers, government, and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of desktop computers and servers.

This continues Novell's ongoing efforts to reduce power consumption and IT's impact on the environment.

CRM info from the GroupWise client

Kevan Barney — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:27:44 +0000

Interesting GroupWise news today … Omni Technology Solutions announced availability of Riva GroupWise Integration for SugarCRM.

Riva synchronizes opportunities, quotes and cases from SugarCRM and makes them available in all GroupWise clients including BlackBerry and GroupWise Mobile Server mobile devices, GroupWise WebAccess, Linux, Macintosh and Windows desktops.