Novell Touts Linux At BrainShare
Bolstered by a flurry of strategic announcements, the company vowed to become the first major vendor to embrace open source, turning the heads of solution providers and Linux legends alike.
Even fellow vendors IBM and Hewlett-Packard got in on the action, announcing plans to push the SUSE Linux platform to certain desktops and laptops by the end of the year.
\
Novell Chairman and CEO Jack Messman spoke at the opening general session of BrainShare.
"I've been a Novell partner for 15 years, and right now, they are on track like they haven't been since the company started," said Tim Shea, founder of Alpha NetSolutions, a solution provider in Worcester, Mass. "Novell is pointing the way in showing how a commercial software entity can embrace open source without giving away all of its products."
Perhaps the biggest news from the conference pertained to Novell's new Open Enterprise Server. Announced a full year ahead of schedule, the solution combines the recently released NetWare 7 and the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, enabling customers to choose how services are deployed. The solution was expected to be available by the end of the year.
The Waltham, Mass.-based vendor also introduced the iFolder open-source project and announced plans to release a public beta version of Novell ZENworks 6.5 by mid-April.
Company executives also unveiled the road map for Novell's Nsure and exteNd next-generation identity services based on the Eclipse open-source development framework.
"[Novell] can be the next big thing in Linux," said Linux creator Linus Torvalds, a surprise speaker during the conference's opening keynote. "Open source is the perfect way to solve technical issues."
Novell channel partners seemed to agree wholeheartedly.
Parker Pearson, marketing manager at Advanced Logic Industries, Blacksburg, Va., said that although Linux adoption might be slow, the strategy will pay dividends in the long run.
Channel partners will play an integral role in facilitating the company's transition to the Linux environment, said Mark Hardart, vice president of global sales at Novell. "The big challenge we need to address is the education piece, [explaining] exactly what this all means," he said. "One thing in all of this is certain, and that is, we're not doing any of it without our partners."