03.08.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part III: Novell’s NCR, SAP and Sitescape Business (with Videos)
A partner of a partner is also a partner
There are a few Novell products and announcements which are worth mentioning here. The first is the point of sales product from NCR, which uses SUSE.
Novell and NCR are cross-promoting their products as an integrated POS solution.
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Linux grew 32 percent year-over-year, according to figures released by IHL Group. The research firm reckons Linux accounted for $475 million of the $5.56 billion market, putting it third overall with an 8.5 percent market share. More details can be found here.
The second is the SAP announcement which puts SUSE in the cockpit.
The hardware for the prototype SAP is showing at CeBIT is provided by open-source software specialist Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise.
We wrote about this negatively earlier this week. SAP is a Microsoft partner, so it’s hardly surprising that it uses a “Microsoft-approved” (i.e. Microsoft-taxed) distribution, despite the recent Red Hat certification for SAP.
Over at Linux Journal, Novell’s ICEcore Workshop gets highlighted.
It turns out that Novell’s Open Source Technology Center is sponsoring a workshop on ICEcore, an open source collaboration toolkit (it’s written one way on their website and another in the email, I don’t know which one to believe.).
Speaking of ICEcore, see this new Sitescape interview.
Novell CEO talks about this acquisition as well.
Not much has happened in the past week, but Novell still had those announcements to make. █
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.