With the SuSE and Ximian deals, Novell has thrown itself into Linux, with plans to further consolidate its presence in open source both as a technology and a movement.

Those plans include Novell’s recent announcement it has joined IBM Corp’s Eclipse tools consortium and plans for a forthcoming rationalization of the GroupWise-Ximian desktop platform later this year.

Such is the spirit pace and change, that investment analyst Merrill Lynch was recently prompted to write Linux is bringing Novell back from the dead, adding in its report the company is re-emerging from virtual anonymity.

Novell vice chairman of the office of the CEO Stone disputed Merrill’s phraseology during a recent interview with ComputerWire, but said the timing of the Ximian and SuSE deals couldn’t be better, because Linux is a hot topic.

Novell has a history of execution problems… we get going on a new strategy and just when it looks as if we’re going to pull it off, it falls back in, he said.

With hindsight, OneNet and Denim hinted at web services, but both failed to revive Novell’s fortunes or ignite the market.

During the coming months Novell will take further steps towards embracing open source and Linux. A version of NetWare running a Linux kernel, probably SuSE, is due, while more NetWare services will be broken-out of the operating system and put on Linux.

Stone believes NetWare Services for Linux is one of the better parts of Novell’s history – making elements of its operating system more available to customers, a process that begin with eDirectory. With a history in operating systems, Stone also believes Novell has the heritage to help Linux scale on servers.

This year will also see the beginnings of convergence between overlapping Novell technologies, particularly GroupWise and Ximian e-mail and collaboration platforms.

The goal is to have a Novell Linux desktop. The beginning of that will happen this year. There’s an opportunity to get market share on the Linux desktop, Stone said.

Novell’s ZENworks resource management software, meanwhile, will also move to Linux. Stone believes this strategy will pay off next year, 2005, when customers begin to clamor for management of elements like virtualized data and clusters over 32 CPUs.

We are looking to get that to Linux really quickly, Stone said of Novell’s ZENworks plans.

Despite the talk off Linux and open source, Stone maintains Novell is committed to NetWare. However, with an operating system soon to run a Linux kernel and plans to rationalize other areas of the Novell portfolio towards Linux, it’s a commitment many feel doesn’t quite add up.

We support both, we are not going to kill NetWare. We will sell customers whatever they want, Stone said. He added, though, it’s not a bad thing for customers to migrate from NetWare to SuSE. That’s still revenue back to Novell, and that’s OK, Stone said.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire