05.10.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part III: Novell’s GNU/Linux (SUSE) Business and Some New Videos
Novell’s GNU/Linux business may not be flourishing, but there are some deals and contracts which we ought to at least keep track of.
SAP
SAP, Novell, H-P and IBM found themselves sort of falling in love, with the exception of H-P and IBM that are competing fiercely (also against Sun Microsystems).
SAP, as part of its effort to lure more midsize business customers, will introduce appliance-like systems pre-loaded with its ERP software, a database, and a Linux operating system, running on hardware from Hewlett-Packard or IBM.
The press release about SUSE and H-P for SAP’s service is here.
Reliable and Affordable SAP(R) Business All-in-One Solution with SAP(R) MaxDB(TM) Database and SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell to Be Preconfigured, Pretested and Preinstalled on HP Systems
This one is about SAP and Novell.
Six solutions highlight integration of Novell’s identity and security products with SAP solution-based environments, enabling customers to further maximize their investments
Another article about H-P, SAP and SUSE:
The new turnkey solution will also include SAP’s MaxDB database based on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell.
Hewlett-Packard
There is some more from H-P exclusively. While H-P continues to obey its masters at Microsoft, it is willing to also support Microsoft's partner. It puts SLED 10 on some low-cost laptops, which were reviewed by CNET.
The good: Inexpensive; solid construction; stylish design belies its budget price; nearly full-size keyboard.
The bad: Weak performance; unimpressive battery life; tiny touch pad; misses out on new Intel Atom CPUs.
Also reaching CNN — a puzzling gesture to some:
HP’s bold entry into the mini notebook market comes in the form of the 2133 Mini-Note PC, a 9-inch laptop with a tailored look and magnesium alloy chassis that starts at $599 for Windows (or $499 for Linux) and tops out at $749 with extras including Bluetooth, a Webcam, a 7,200 rpm hard drive, and 2GB of RAM.
NASA
It is rather sad to find even the United States Government now relies on some Microsoft ‘Linux tax’, but what can you do?
NASA ditches Itanic for new Xeon-based SGI giant
[...]
The two organizations announced today that SGI will build a whopping 20,480-core system for NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. The giant will run on four-core versions of Intel’s Xeon chip and should reach peak performance of 245 Teraflops, which would make it one of the fastest computers in the world. The system, centered around SGI’s Altix ICE hardware, will also boast - gulp - 20,800 GB of memory and 450TB of storage.
The computer will also be water-cooled and run Suse Linux.
Voltaire
A couple of press releases from Voltaire shout about SUSE and Novell. Here is the first one:
First InfiniBand Provider to Offer Enterprise-Class Support for OFED on Multivendor Hardware
[...]
Novell is the first customer to take advantage of the new offering.
And here is the second one.
“As more customers select SUSE Linux Enterprise for their high-bandwidth and low-latency computing needs, we’re seeing increased adoption of InfiniBand - particularly in financial services and manufacturing,” said Moiz Kohari, vice president of engineering for Novell. “It was important for Novell to provide a complete support offering to these customers, and we selected Voltaire based on its leadership in delivering end-to-end InfiniBand support.”
New Videos
Remember Novell’s ‘own’ version of OpenOffice.org? We criticised this whole idea of Novell Edition in the past, even just a few days ago. Nevertheless, here comes a video demo of it.
The Oggs took a while to produce for our readers’ convenience (and more importantly their freedom). Convenient it is not to us (very time-consuming), but freedom comes at a cost.
Here are a couple more Novell videos that have just been added to YouTube.
Novell SUSE caso de sucesso Casas Bahia
This last one seems to speak about a migration to SUSE, but it’s not truly interesting in any way. █
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.