06.22.07
Do-No-Evil Saturday: Novell Partnerships and Improvements
The latest in this series includes some interesting bits, but not as many as we saw last week.
Open-Xchange, which was sad to see Novell dropping Hula, seems to have gotten closer to Novell again.
Novell and former partner Open-Xchange are updating their
collaboration offers in an effort to make their respective
products more feature rich for users.
Novell has revealed its intention to improve its real-time Linux products.
Novell today announced new enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and unveiled new partnerships that expand the ecosystem around Novell’s low latency Linux solution.
There is also another new partnership.
Working with Novell, Transitive created its QuickTransit Virtual Appliance — a pre-built virtual machine comprised of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64, resulting in a ready-to-run application migration solution.
A couple more so-called “Open Source” companies have joined Novell’s Market Start.
Novell has added two new members to its Market Start partner program, which designed to provide a leg-up to open source software start-ups.
Systems management vendor Zenoss and portal and content management player, Liferay, have been added to the program, which promotes open source software running on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise at small and medium businesses.
On to some less intersting stuff, a company demonstrated its product which relies on Novell’s.
Concurrent, a leading provider of time-critical Linux® operating systems, software and integrated computer solutions for mission-critical applications, today announced that the company will demonstrate NightStar tools for SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time in Novell’s booth at the Securities Industry Financial Management Association (SIFMA) Technology Management Conference & Exhibit, being held June 19-21, 2007 at the New York Hilton, New York, USA.
The following came from Voltaire, which partnered with Novell.
Voltaire, a provider of grid backbone solutions, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Novell to offer a joint low latency solution to improve performance of real-time trading applications in the financial markets. The combined solution reduces latency bottlenecks on both the operating system level and the data center fabric to offer a low latency solution. In addition, the solution is coupled with a support package that provides comprehensive support for both the operating system and InfiniBand capabilities allowing customers to take advantage of improved performance and the highest levels of availability.
SAP illustrates the fact that Microosft and Novell can be conveniently mentioned in the same sentence.
Starry-eyed or no, SAP isn’t entirely monogamous when it comes to partnering with other vendors—or Microsoft competitors, for that matter. Also last month, the ERP giant expanded its relationship with Novell to promote SAP applications running on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.
There is also an article about Novell identity management and an article that reminds us that patents achieve nothing but keep good products away.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.