11.14.09
Novell News Summary – Part III: Pulse Again, SCO’s Jeff Hunsaker is Out, GroupWise Items
Summary: A bundle of news about Novell Pulse, SCO-Novell news, and various other items
With OpenSUSE being the main item this week, not much else could be said about Novell. We wrote about Pulse last week and it is still the most unique item of Novell news.
Pulse
One of our readers, who spotted the noise from Novell’s marketing people, argues that Novell still has a pulse — for now.
Many people think that Novell is controlled directly from Redmond (or certainly sits and gives a paw on command of its Microsoft master). It matters not, the damage “the deal” did to the public perception of Novell IMO shows how insidious a Microsoft relationship can be.
Here is another newer article about Pulse.
Novell has announced the first real-time collaboration platform for the enterprise, Novell Pulse. In addition, Novell stated it is working with Google to enable Novell Pulse users and Google Wave users to seamlessly work together across both systems.
Pulse was also covered or mentioned indirectly under:
i. Thunderbird 3, Raindrop and the Future of Mozilla Messaging
After meeting Ascher in San Francisco and having recently covered both Wave and Novell Pulse-related stories, ReadWriteWeb’s first question was obvious: Would Mozilla be merging Thunderbird and Raindrop for a Google Wave-like experience?
ii. ThoughtWorks Studios ‘Mingles’ with Google Wave
ThoughtWorks Studios was one of three companies demoing software integrations with Google Wave at the conference: Novell showed off a real-time, enterprise collaboration platform called “Pulse,” which it plans to integrate with Google Wave; and SAP demoed an application called “Gravity,” through which users collaborate on creating and modeling business processes.
iii. Summit: Dealing with communications overload
When you look at some of the tools becoming available, Novell’s recent Pulse announcement and Google Wave are examples, you can combine the transient messages around something with something which is persistent through which you can refer to it and which many people can work on.
SCO
Jeff Hunsaker is out! Groklaw writes:
Here’s an interview with CEO Shawn Jenkins, to give you the flavor of what they do. It’s a software company. I understand it’s a company that uses Linux to some degree, actually. I’m sure the techies there are simply thrilled to have Young in their midst. Note his bio leaves the SCO job off the list, which is the same pattern we noticed when he joined SCO in 2004. It must be hard to be an ex-SCO person. Or maybe it’s just because he is stressing other skill sets now, like the ability to “handle rapid growth”, not something he needed at SCO.
And I notice that the company is hiring, even looking for a general counsel, who will report to Young. They need a Senior Software Engineer (EDI and Java or .NET) too.
So, where did Darl McBride land, I wonder? I haven’t heard anything yet. Maybe NASA could send him to the moon. I hear they found water there, so maybe he could bottle it and sell Moon Water from his Harley?
For what it’s worth, we have mentioned Jeff Hunsaker in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Here is another important development:
SUSE Moves to Lift Stay on Arbitration; Novell Asks to Consolidate with IBM Litigation or Have Both Cases Assigned to That Judge
Novell has made two moves. In bankruptcy court, SUSE asks that the stay be lifted so the arbitration can go forward. And in Utah, Novell has filed a Notice of Related Proceeding, asking that the SCO v. Novell and SCO v. IBM litigations either be consolidated with SCO v. IBM or at least be assigned to the same judge, Tena Campbell.
Past Software
Certified Novell engineers are mentioned in relation to the impact of an Oracle/Novell takeover.
Radical mergers such as the Oracle/Sun combo could revolutionise and shake up IT. Conversely, Oracle would do well to remember what happens to companies which either overstretch themselves and/or become entrenched in fighting yesterday’s wars and settling old scores. Novell became unstuck doing both – remember CNE?
Novell applications are being replaced in North Georgia College & State University, according to this press release
Matrix42 Empirum v12 Suite of Management Products Will Replace Outdated Combination of Manual Processes, Scripts and Novell Applications
Novell support (including Netware) is mentioned in another release and the effect of Novell on 3Com is mentioned following the acquisition announcement (by HP).
1990 – Facing stiff competition from Microsoft and Novell, 3Com gets out of the network operating system business.
GroupWise
GroupWise support in the BlackBerry gets Novell some attention and GroupWise love from Messaging Architects is noted in the following press release:
Messaging Architects and Omni Deliver Innovative Compliance Management for Exchange 2010 and GroupWise 8
Messaging Architects and Omni, recognized leaders in email management products and services, today announced that Omni’s eControl console will support natively Messaging Architects’ Email Risk Management and Compliance products. The enhancement will benefit M+Archive and M+Guardian customers with simplified administration management, provisioning and delegation of routine tasks.
There are other new examples of GroupWise support:
…Novell® GroupWise are supported.
Some BlackBerry support again:
Magticom is offering BlackBerry Enterprise Server for corporate clients, a solution that tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise and works with existing enterprise systems to enable secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate data. BlackBerry services also allow consumers and business users to manage up to ten supported email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts) from their BlackBerry smartphone.
The defeat of GroupWise is still being debated, even in the ‘Microsoft press’.
What technology was the city using for e-mail?
The primary e-mail system that the city was using was the Novell one, and I think they also had some instances of Microsoft Exchange as well.
More GroupWise in government:
The departments and agencies whose users will be migrated onto the centralised email platform are already using Exchange, but some installations of IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell’s GroupWise platforms remain throughout the state government.
The National Kidney Foundation has found something to complement GroupWise:
The foundation turned to email archiving as a less labor-intensive means of cutting down on the size of its two GroupWise Post Offices than trying to get stricter about mailbox quotas. Given that GroupWise is not as widely used as Microsoft’s Exchange, finding an email archiving vendor that supports it was a tricky and expensive project.
Identity Management
Except for some minor items there was only this press release, but that too is nothing major.
Smart card management solution involving integration with Novell Identity Manager
Security/Recovery
Novell is still capitalising on threat (or perceived threat) and data recovery is said to be assisted by Novell Cluster Services.
Now, all these servers are virtualized and run from a cluster, using Novell Cluster Services . So when a physical machine goes down, the virtual server can be moved to another location with very little downtime. Moving to virtualization also saved in hardware costs. Since newly purchased servers would no longer require hard drives for storage, it could save $7,000 to $8,000 per server, according to the city.
People
Novell has undergone some shuffles at the top.
Mr Poole takes over for acting senior vice president of human resources Scott Semel. Mr Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.
To use Novell’s explanation:
Novell today announced that Russell Poole, former vice president and senior HR partner, has been named senior vice president, Human Resources, effective immediately. Poole will be based out of Novell’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass., and will report directly to President and CEO Ron Hovsepian. Poole takes over for acting Senior Vice President of Human Resources Scott Semel. Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.
There is more to be found here and maybe here.
Former Novell software engineer Verdon Walker has run the race three times with the corporate team “2 Slow 2 Win 2 Dumb 2 Quit.”
Partners
The following new press release identifies NDS8 as a Novell partner.
NDS8 (www.nds8.co.uk) is a Novell Platinum Partner and Astaro Preferred Partner, focused on maximising the functionality and reliability of Novell and SuSE applications.
Novell was mentioned in some other press releases, mostly in the footers.
A community college seems to be giving this technical advice about Novell in a new video that it has just uploaded. █
