08.09.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: Virtualisation, Security and Legacy
Virtualisation
Novell’s CEO will be a speaker fairly soon. His presentation will take place in New York.
Other keynoters include Marie Hattar, VP of network systems and security solutions at Cisco; and Ronald W. Hovsepian, president and chief executive of Novell. Hattar is expected to discuss trends in data centers and videoconferencing, and Hovsepian is expected to address the latest in virtualization.
Partners
Not much has happened with Novell in the past week, despite the LinuxWorld expo. There was this press release, however, which reveals another loose connection to Novell.
Tan Qureshi started his business in 1988, following a multi-year career with General Motors and EDS. An Ottowa native, he transferred to Ontario to manage IT infrastructure support at a local GM manufacturing operation, armed with deep experience on a broad range of hardware and software platforms, including DEC VAX, HP, Compaq, Microsoft and Novell.
Initial work in his newly created company focused almost exclusively on Novell platforms. Over time it became clear to Qureshi that Microsoft applications would ultimately be most valued and required by his core customers.
An H-P connection through Xen:
Specifically, HP expanded virtualization support from HP Serverguard for Linux. Beyond VMWare, HP now supports Novell SUSE and Red Hat Xen virtual machine guests.
Mail/GroupWise
Objectworld added Novell’s Groupwise support to its product.
Support for 95% of the Existing PBX Market and All Major E-Mail Platforms (Including Google Gmail and Novell GroupWise) Further Strengthens Objectworld’s Unified Communications Solutions for Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses
Some more about this here:
By adding support for multiple PBXs, as well as adding support for Google Gmail and Novell GroupWise to its unified messaging capabilities, Objectworld enables businesses to integrate a wide variety of PBX systems, messages stores, PBX systems, SIP phones and gateways and third-party hardware, software and services into a single unified communications solution.
Security
Apart from a couple of flaws, there was this from GCN about security bugs in eDirectory.
I have just finished downloading the latest batch of updates and patches for my PC, which totaled more than 250 megabytes. It was part of what Alan Paller, research director of the SANS Institute, called “the worst week of 2008: Two unpatched Microsoft zero-days, the big [Domain Name System] problem/patch, and remote code execution bugs in Novell eDirectory and Sun’s JRE.”
Novell was also mentioned in relation the the DNS stir-up.
BIND is distributed by vendors such as Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, all of which have released the updated versions of the ISC’s software to their customers and urged IT managers to install the upgrades
Identity Management
It’s part of security really, but here is Hans Krogull of Novell speaking about the rise in demand for identity management after 9/11.
Next up: SUSE news. █
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.
Needs Sunlight said,
August 9, 2008 at 2:21 pm
What’s with the advertising for Novell?
Roy Schestowitz said,
August 9, 2008 at 2:24 pm
It’s a case of studying (for future reference), not advertising. This began over a year ago when SUSE people complained that we only ever covered bad news for Novell.