06.21.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part III: Security, Virtualisation and Some Leftovers
This post covers some developments at Novell that are not necessarily Linux-related.
Security
Novell eDirectory gets a special treat from Barracuda.
Facilitating simplified rollout of award-winning Barracuda Web Filter, Barracuda Networks Inc., has expanded authentication capabilities of its product line with Novell eDirectory, an identity management and policy control tool used by many Fortune 500 companies as well as educational organizations. With this upgrade, Barracuda Web Filter can perform transparent, single-sign-on authentication.
Here is the press release.
Barracuda Networks Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, today announced it has expanded authentication capabilities of its Barracuda Web Filter product line with Novell eDirectory, a popular identity management and policy control tool used by many Fortune 500 companies as well as educational organizations. This upgrade will enable the Barracuda Web Filter to perform transparent, single-sign-on authentication.
Barracuda is of special interest to us because it currently tries to squash a very poor software patent (Trend Micro’s tactless battle against Free software [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).
Security management is one among the topics that Novell will cover in an upcoming conference.
Novell today announced its participation in the 2008 HP Software Universe conference, booth 251, June 16 - 19 at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Through demonstrations and presentations, customers will learn how enterprises can mitigate risk and meet compliance mandates with Novell(R) identity and security management solutions.
Mainsoft
It’s hard to be overly judgmental, but related to Mono, there is more .NET coming from another vector into Linux. Technically, the situation is different because it’s case of deployment/migration rather than development. We will probably write an article about this one day.
Have you ever wished you could run ASP.NET applications on Linux, without having to rewrite your code or leave the Visual Studio development environment? In this article, I show you how to port Steve Clements’ AJAX ASP.NET RSS Reader to native Java and deploy it to Apache Tomcat on Linux. I also show you how to add an AnimationExtender and a HoverMenu from the AJAX Control Toolkit in Visual Studio, while targeting Java.
Virtualisation
PlateSpin, which is now owned by Novell, made this announcement.
PlateSpin ULC, a Novell company, today announced new packaging options for PlateSpin Forge(TM) that make the innovative disaster recovery hardware appliance even more cost-effective for small and medium-sized enterprises that need to protect ten or more server workloads.
Here is a corresponding article.
PlateSpin, a Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) company, has introduced new packaging options for its Forge disaster recovery hardware appliance. The solution will now be more cost effective for small and midsize businesses that need to protect ten or more server workloads.
Staff
Shifts in management are mentioned in the UK again (it was the same in Ireland and Canada not so long ago). Novell makes promises, but it has not delivered quite so much yet.
Novell’s new UK channel chief has pledged to grow partner revenues by nearly a third this quarter as she continues to breathe life into the software vendor’s channel.
Jill Henry admitted Novell’s channel was “flatlining” when she joined as channel development director in August 2007. Although channel revenues for the first two quarters of her tenure remained flat, Henry told CRN she was expecting a 27 per cent hike for the three months to 31 July.
That’s pretty much everything from the past week. Lee Romero from Novell had a go at some participatory Web advice, but it’s nothing of any significance. █




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.