Novell's Modesto Technology To Fuel Web Services Platform

In mid-2003, Novell plans to unveil a multiplatform operating system for hosting Web services and serving high-end data center needs, said Brian Howell, product manager in the software vendor's Platform Services Group.

The technology, developed via a project Novell dubbed "Modesto," is based on a unique nano kernel that supports multiple virtual machines plus all major hardware environments, applications and industry-standard tools, Howell said in a presentation at Novell's BrainShare 2002 conference here. The next-generation OS, for example, will support various instances of multiple applications, including Java, Linux, Unix and Windows software as well as all leading processors. Such processor and application independence will make the next versions of NetWare an ideal platform for Web services, Howell said.

In addition, the Modesto technology's support for as many as 6,000 processors and multiple virtual machines makes Novell's next-generation OS ideal for the blade-server computing needs of corporate data center and service providers, according to Howell.

The next-generation OSes are code-named Hayden and Uinta. The beta of the 32-bit Hayden OS with Java VM support is due to come out late this year--with the OS slated to ship in the middle of next year--and the 64-bit Uinta version is due to be available in 2004, Howell said.

While the Modesto project was originally targeted at Intel's 64-bit architecture and Itanium chip, it has become far more important as a platform for Novell's Web services vision, Howell said, noting that Modesto gives Novell a mainframe-like architecture for high-end performance on commodity Intel servers.

"This is not your father's NetWare. It's time to introduce a new architecture, and it's not an incremental step forward for NetWare. It's a quantum leap forward," Howell said. "We're hoping to deploy Web services and Net business solutions on it." He also predicted that Java applications will run faster on Novell's next-gen OS offerings than on any other OS.