Novell’s executive Jack Messman said yesterday Novell’s objective is to grow Linux’s presence on enterprise desktops, a market Novell is confident will expand during the next year as organizations seek alternatives to Microsoft’s software.
But, he noted, Novell would provide very tight integration between desktop and server environments. That, he said, is a lesson Novell learned the hard way – and from Microsoft.
We have been a victim of that in the past. We have learned our lesson, Messman said.
Novell announced a number of products and open source projects backing Messman’s worlds. Opening its annual BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Novell announced an open source desktop services that integrates with servers – iFolder.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), iFolder will allow desktop users to back-up, access and manage personal files to any designated machine. iFolders uses Novell’s Mono, an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework that was acquired with Ximian Inc last year.
SuSE Inc’s Yet Another Setup Tool (YAST), inherited through Novell’s $210m buy of SuSE in January, was also released to open source under the GPL yesterday. YAST provides software for installation, configuration and management of Linux systems.
Novell also announced Open Enterprise Server, combining networking elements from NetWare 7.0 and SuSE Enterprise Server 9.0 including Nterprise Linux Services, and a public beta of its ZENworks 6.5 management software, which includes Ximian’s Red Carpet Enterprise and ZENworks Patch Management, due in April.
Novell, meanwhile, is putting the GroupWise collaboration suite on Linux, for SuSE and Red Hat, bringing more features to Linux desktops.
Open source is coming to Novell’s tools and identity management software. Development and management tools are planned that use the Eclipse framework and combine Nsure and eXtend with visual-based development.
Tools are designed to let managers provision employee access rights by dragging and dropping the person’s profile within the organization chart.
Novell added that future versions of exteNd will provide connection to systems including PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel Systems and Oracle.
For all Novell’s desire to take-on Microsoft, the company is anxious to avoid another head-on clash with the software giant. Microsoft is known for its ability to fight a long, well-funded marketing and technology battle against competitors. Novell, for example, came out the loser in NetWare’s battle with Windows NT.
As such, Messman made it clear Novell is fighting Microsoft using the open source community, which – for Microsoft – means fighting many companies using open source and Linux, not just a vendor like Novell.
We don’t own the Linux code like we do NetWare. The community does. It’s the community that’s taking on Novell, not Novell, Messman said.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
