03.22.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part III: Novell’s New Site, Advertisements and Various Quickies
Here we assemble a bunch of noteworthy updates on Novell.
Novell Gets a New face
Yes, Novell.com has changed. It’s nothing particularly exciting, but after the removal of ‘Microsoft antagonism’ pages in the past, it’s worth exploring the before/after situation. Additionally, mind Novell’s promotion of Windows Vista.
Have you checked out the newly redesigned Novell.com? It has undergone a significant transformation to showcase Novell and its offerings in a dynamic interface designed to encourage exploration.
Novell Fills YouTube with Commercials
While Microsoft does this in a shameful way by shoving uninteresting viral marketing clips, Novell does it with a bit more style. The adverts are not new (some of them are easy to recognise), but they are case studies that have just been uploaded to YouTube. They are:
SCO
In case you wish to know more about Novell’s case against SCO, here is the latest report. The trial is set to resume in April.
Novell Inc. has had no contact with the head of a company trying to buy the bankrupt SCO Group and plans to go ahead with a trial next month to determine how much SCO may owe it for licensing the Unix operating system, officials said Monday.
Antitrust
There is also the Novell-Microsoft case, which revolves around WordPerfect. It’s far from over.
Though the anticompetitive issues raised in Novell’s 10-year legal odyssey against Microsoft have become moot, the newly revived case “will be very beneficial from a marketing standpoint for Novell,” said Richard Bliss, vice president of marketing for Gwava. “The publicity will help them get the message out that they are a new company with a new mission that even Microsoft is now supporting.”
Separately from BrainShare, FalconStor announced availability of a product that works closely with Novell’s systems.
Marc Blaise, Manager of the Open Systems Division, ONIGC said: “Our task was to achieve scalability, security and high availability of data in the enterprise, with a solution that is compatible with our existing infrastructure. It also needed to be easy to manage and compatible with our Novell NetWare and Novell GroupWise environments. The FalconStor NSS solution gave us the exact advanced storage services we needed, such as synchronous mirroring and snapshots, in our heterogeneous environment.”
This weekend’s posts are generally a bit of a mess due to the volume of articles to go through. Expect many typos because those posts are published very quickly and written in a single pass without proofreading. █
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.