In the data center, Red Hat and Novell are clearly the market leaders, controlling over 90% of paid Linux server shipments. And although Red Hat maintains a market share lead, the gap is narrowing very fast: Novell's share of the paid Linux market actually increased by 5 percent, while Red Hat's share decreased by 5 percent, according to the most recent published data from IDC.

The single vendor view isn't supported by the level of industry investment, either. Whether one looks at IBM's driving software appliances and mainframe Linux with Novell, HP's focus on SAP and mission-critical computing on SUSE Linux Enterprise, or SAP's delivery of joint solutions with Novell for large and medium enterprises, it's clear the market has no interest in stifling diversity or innovation.

The migration to virtualization and cloud is also creating new opportunities for Linux, while driving strong demand for complete solutions that address security and management issues inherent in these new environments. Among potential adopters of virtualization and cloud, almost 90% have significant concerns about security, performance and availability. Novell's approach to the intelligent workload management (IWM) market is designed to address these concerns. To suggest that because Novell is offering these integrated solutions for the IWM market somehow infers a lack of commitment to Linux is absurd. Linux is a key ingredient in Novell's vision for IWM. Take the software appliance market. IDC has estimated growth of over 118% in 2010 for software appliances, a building block for creating intelligent workloads. Linux is uniquely suited to this kind of deployment because of its modular nature, and independent software vendors (ISVs) like this approach because they can give their end customers a ready-to-use system that is much easier and faster to deploy, with virtually no configuration or ongoing management needed. This ability to “mass customize” software appliances creates a lot of opportunities for Linux, for ISVs and for an ecosystem of solution providers. At Novell we've invested in this approach and have seen more than 300,000 software appliances created using our online tool SUSE Studio. Major ISVs such as IBM, Ingres and SAP are shipping appliances based on SUSE Linux Enterprise. And SUSE Linux Enterprise now offers more certified applications – over 5,000 – than any other Linux distribution.

There is simply no hard evidence to support the view that a single commercial Linux vendor will dominate the data center, with all others “pushed aside.” This is good news for customers, for partners building solutions on Linux, and for Linux itself. Competition breeds invention, and Linux would be much the poorer if a monopoly emerged.

Effective January 1, 2010, Novell will consolidate operations from four business units down to two. Novell's Identity and Security Management (ISM), Systems and Resource Management (SRM) and Open Platform Solutions (OPS) business units will be integrated to create the new Security, Management and Operating Platforms business unit. A second Collaboration Solutions business unit will be responsible for Novell's Workgroup and Services businesses.

Ron Hovsepian, Novell's president and CEO, commented in the release: “This reorganization is designed to transform Novell into a more focused, integrated and agile global company that will quickly capture a leadership position in the Intelligent Workload Management market. Consolidating into two business units will accelerate the ability of our talented executive team to execute on our IWM strategy while continuing to drive new opportunities in the collaboration market. The new Global Alliances organization will help make sure we develop our growing network of strategic partners as we seek to gain leadership in the markets we serve.”

This follows our announcement last week on how Novell planned to compete in the emerging market for Intelligent Workload Management Solutions.

Earlier today Novell announced an important evolution in our company strategy to address the emerging market for intelligent workload management solutions. You can find out more about our strategy, as well as our product roadmap for IWM, at our website.

I'm confident our approach to IWM is highly differentiated and plays to significant strengths at Novell, but I can't entirely take credit for this: Our IWM vision was heavily informed by our customers. Over the last six months my management team and I have spent a lot of time with customers around the world so that we understand the issues they face managing their existing data centers, as well as their strategies for exploiting the potential offered by virtualization and cloud computing. No matter the size of the customer, their business or their location, we heard a simple and consistent story.

First, the customers we spoke to reinforced a well-worn truth: most data centers are inefficient, inflexible and costly. Today, the typical data center only uses about 20% of the available compute power. IT and business management alike want to find ways of making their existing IT assets more efficient, which is fueling a move towards virtualization and cloud.

Second, customers have palpable concerns about the security, management and control of their IT resources. As they think about managing IT resources across a mix of physical, virtual and cloud environments, these concerns only get amplified. In fact, I believe that the adoption of virtualization and cloud will be heavily impeded until these core issues are addressed.

Finally, our customers told us in no uncertain terms that Novell has the core technologies and capabilities to address the security and control challenges in their existing physical data centers and out to their future virtualized and cloud-based environments. They also told us that a key asset for Novell lay outside our four walls: our partners. Along with our unique and open approach to making IT work as one, our partners are a critical ingredient to making IWM successful. This is why I'm particularly proud of the strong partner endorsement we've received on our approach to IWM from ACS, Infosys, Tech Data, VMware and many others.

Intelligent Workload Management makes our customers more efficient andagile. It allows them to revitalize their existing data centers and make the move to cloud computing with confidence. I am certain Novell will emerge as a leader in the IWM market, but more importantly, I believe IWM will help our customers do business better.