n the following video, Miguel de Icaza explains Mono. The video is from 2004. He mentions nothing about software patents and he sure praises the technology and assumes that being an ECMA standard is somewhat an indication of being ’safe’. It’s not.
We have already gone through this conference last week, essentially by keeping record of announcements and articles. Here are a few which reaches the press a tad late (after Sunday). We need to have this documented for future reference, particularly where relationships between companies are studied. It is also useful to show that we do not ignore Novell’s more positive news. We just present that separately.
It has competed hard with the likes of Microsoft and IBM, but over the years Novell has remained a smaller player than either of its two main rivals.
GWAVA
This is just a press release, but the news is tied to Novell’s GroupWise.
Snowtide Informatics Systems, Inc., the leading provider of enterprise-class PDF content extraction solutions, today announced that GWAVA, the premier source for innovative Novell GroupWise solutions has licensed Snowtide’s PDFTextStream library for inclusion in its Retain email archiving product.
Large and small enterprises, representing financial services, healthcare, education and government, are securing user identities and meeting compliance requirements with Novell
ActivIdentity made an announcement that talks about its relationship with Novell.
ActivIdentity Corporation announced today that the integration of the ActivIdentity Smart Employee ID and the Novell Identity Assurance Solution will be demonstrated at BrainShare 2008, showcasing the next generation in physical-logical access convergence solutions.
ActivIdentity Corp., Fremont, Calif., and Novell Inc., Waltham, Mass., have combined products that may make it easier for corporation to use one ID card for both physical and logical access, the companies announced.
From Novell, the following generic and broad announcement was made:
Responding to customer needs for a seamless end-to-end identity and
security infrastructure, Novell today announced seven new vendors have
joined its identity and security management technology partner ecosystem.
Enterprises today are faced with defending against increasing security
threats and meeting compliance in a complex and heterogeneous IT
environment. By teaming with these vendors, Novell helps customers
cost-effectively increase security and streamline their identity
infrastructure by delivering a broader choice of solutions. Products from
the new partners, when combined with Novell’s identity and security
management offerings, will enable enterprises to further leverage Novell’s
solutions to solve specific business challenges.
Another company that works with Novell in this area is Layer 7 Technologies, which issued this press release.
Layer 7 Technologies, a leading provider of security and governance solutions for Service Oriented integration architectures, today announced a go-to-market partnership with Novell to secure programmatic Web services, leveraging Novell eDirectory and Novell Access Manager identity solutions.
The Blackbird Group today announced it has joined Novell’s identity and security management partner ecosystem. Under the terms of the agreement, Novell’s global sales channel will market and recommend Blackbird’s DeTroubler for their customers’ directory backup and recovery needs as part of Novell’s identity and security management framework.
About a fortnight ago we saw a success story in a hotel (or a chain thereof). Here is a timely article about this.
The Novell-led Bandit project aims to address the challenges of cost effectively connecting disparate systems in the hotel and hospitality sector while streamlining administration and meeting compliance requirements.
Ireland
Some good signs for Novell in Ireland, according to its own claims. Here is one sign among several.
Firms operating in the compliance market have enjoyed some good form of late with companies such as Dublin-based Norkom performing well. The Bear Stearns incident might yet create more opportunities in this market as regulators could crack down even further, meaning that bad news for the market might be good news for firms such as Novell.
Novell’s Irish operation is playing a key role in the reshaping of the infrastructure software firm, according to Novell’s president of EMEA, Volker Smid.
We heard from Volker quite a bit recently [1, 2, 3]. We had quite a bit of coverage in the past about Novell in Ireland, including expansions.
Backup Express from Syncsort Incorporated is now available for Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (Linux). The seamless integration of the two solutions allows joint customers to successfully protect their data, applications and servers while also taking advantage of the Xen-based NetWare paravirtualization available in OES2.
Moonwalk announced its latest Moonwalk software suite, with support for Novell’s Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES2).
Novell’s Open Enterprise Server 2 combines workgroup services from Novell with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, completing the Open Enterprise Server shift to providing workgroup services entirely on Linux. It includes dynamic storage technology for user-defined policies, storage management enhancements and Netware virtualization.
Guys and Dolls… and Muppets
There were quite a few puns available here and bloggers took the opprtunity. Novell hooked up with Sesame Street.
Novell today announced that Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind the ground-breaking children’s television program “Sesame Street,” has selected Novell to streamline its hardware and software infrastructure. Using Novell® ZENworks® Asset Management, which provides a complete and accurate view of the organization’s software licenses, inventories and usage, Sesame Workshop is now better able to comply with audit requests and properly manage its leasing contracts. By consolidating its Web server infrastructure using Xen* virtualization on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, Sesame Workshop is lowering server hardware costs, increasing flexibility and enabling its data center to dynamically respond to the needs of its business.
Watch how sys-con.com, home of O’Gara 007, merely rewrites that press release to make a bogus ‘article’. Compare the words below to the ones above.
Novell announced that Sesame Workshop has selected Novell to streamline its hardware and software infrastructure. Using Novell ZENworks Asset Management, Sesame Workshop is now better able to comply with audit requests and properly manage its leasing contracts.
Very original, sys-con.com. We will soon show another example.
Novell on Tuesday announced that Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street, is a reference customer using ZENworks Asset Management and Xen virtualization on Suse Linux Enterprise Server.
Fossa
Fossa was mentioned very briefly yesterday. Here is some more coverage of it.
Novell has positioned its ZenWorks systems and identity management product line as a central piece to its newly unveiled “Fossa Project” strategy, which aims to turn compute infrastructure into collaboration infrastructure.
“Enterprise computing will change and we will be at the center of it,” said Jeff Jaffe, Novell’s CTO, said during the opening keynote of the company’s annual Brainshare conference. He said the key word would be “agility,” which he said would be defined in large part by policy and identity enablement within the Novell infrastructure software stack.
The company said its new strategy, code-named Fossa, aims to allow companies to dynamically assign workloads to server resources within their datacentres. It will also include enhancements to Novell’s virtualisation, Linux, orchestration, policy, identity, compliance, and collaboration tools.
Jeff Jaffe, Novell’s CTO and EVP of business units, outlined the company’s technical vision at this week’s BrainShare 2008 conference in Salt Lake City, codenamed The Fossa Project. Jaffe explained that a fossa is an agile, cat-like animal native to Madagascar with no known predators. Fossa, he mentioned, also serves well as an acronym for “Free and Open Source Software with Agility.”
The third (and last) part is on its way. It requires more editing. Apologies for all the typos. █
We have been tracking announcements and reports from BrainShare over the past week. Here is a quick roundup that hopefully sheds some light on what was happening.
At its annual BrainShare user conference today, Novell unveiled products,
partnerships and its strategic vision for the future to customers,
partners, press, and industry and financial analysts. Novell’s BrainShare,
with 5,500 participants from 58 countries, features keynotes, business and
technical sessions, and demonstrations that illuminate Novell’s software
that solves customer problems today and Novell’s strategy for streamlining
computing in the future. Cornerstone sponsor SAP leads a group of 65
sponsors and exhibitors at the conference.
First thing this morning I went to the General Session (a.k.a. “keynote”) with Ron Hovsepian, Jeff Jaffe, John Dragoon, and Jim Ebzery. (If you couldn’t make it, or just want to relive the experience, the vids are already up on the BrainShare site here.) The room was packed — not sure how many people were at the general session, but it was a huge room, and looked quite full from where I was sitting.
Photos
In case you want to see what it looked like, here are some photos. Seems nice.
However Novell also provides plenty of down-time opportunities from pool tables, and huge TV screens showing episodes of the US version of The Office.
Agility, Agility, Agility
Yes, there was a theme which got rather tedious after you saw it dozens of times in the press. For example:
Free and open source software plus agility is Brainshare mantra
Jeff Jaffe, Novell’s CTO and EVP of business units, outlined the company’s technical vision at this week’s BrainShare 2008 conference in Salt Lake City, codenamed The Fossa Project. Jaffe explained that a fossa is an agile, cat-like animal native to Madagascar with no known predators. Fossa, he mentioned, also serves well as an acronym for “Free and Open Source Software with Agility.”
Speaking at the company’s annual user conference Brainshare, Novell’s CTO Jeff Jaffe has announced the company’s new technology strategy which it has rather curiously decided to name after an endangered relative of the mongoose - the Madagascan Fossa.
Despite keeping references to open source and Linux to a minimum, in this morning’s keynote speeches, the Fossa is obviously a play on Free and Open Source Software with the ‘A’ standing for agility. Novell claims that its going to revolutionise the IT world by focusing on creating “agile infrastructure”.
Mixed-IT environments are here to stay. And Novell Inc. wants to be the lubricant — that is, the infrastructure software company — that makes them all work together.
Novell has kicked off its annual user conference by announcing ambitious plans to instigate what it claims is “the next revolution in the IT industry”.
The widely criticized Microsoft Corp.-Novell Inc. interoperability agreement has been a success for his company, Novell CEO Ron Hovespian said Monday.
Speaking to a group of international journalists at the Novell’s annual Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, Hovespian said the deal – signed in November 2006 – has worked because most enterprises have both Novell and Microsoft software deployed in their IT environment. And in order to keep the harmony between two software stacks like JSEE and .NET or between Linux and Windows, he said, Waltham, Mass.-based Novell will continue to foster a working relationship that focuses on interoperability and efficiency with Microsoft products.
Miscellany
Quite a few reports from Peter Galli, who was apparently there:
At BrainShare, the company also will announce a deal that will see the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 preloaded on hardware from a major vendor.
SALT LAKE CITY—Novell will use its annual BrainShare conference here March 17 to announce new and expanded partnerships as well as to show off some of the features and functionality of its upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.
Novell’s chief executive officer and president, Ron Hovsepian, told several thousand people Monday that he has “quite a long list” of reasons to be proud of the company, including a burgeoning customer base and continued innovation.
Top Novell, Inc., officials outlined a strategy Monday that includes an emphasis on products that allow companies greater flexibility to integrate various brands of software into a more seamless whole - and to move the social networking revolution into business.
At the annual Novell BrainShare user conference that started in Salt Lake City today, Novell unveiled its roadmap and loaded the car with new friends. The roadmap includes a new strategy focused on agility, called Fossa, and a new release of SUSE: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Joining Novell for the trip will be new partners bearing products such as SAP, PlateSpin and Atos Origin.
After a very fast start, the conference slowed down somewhat, at least in terms of announcement pace and magnitude. Var Guy thinks so as well.
Novell didn’t deliver any home-run news during BrainShare on March 17, but the software company did manage to smack a few solid singles during the day. Overall, the buzz from Utah sounded pretty upbeat. Here’s a look at Monday’s developments, and The VAR Guy’s take on the situation.
Future posts will look at some less Linux-oriented announcements and contain rather dull press releases. We must keep abreast of Novell’s strategy in order to understand how it may evolve and what this means to Free software and its future prospects. █
There are various new products (software or otherwise) which relate to Novell in one way or another. Here is a fairly complete list which is based on the past week’s news (we still rely heavily on news ‘radars’).
A Linux-based desktop-to-server solution tailored to meet the needs of small businesses, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition combines the flexibility and cost efficiency of open source software with the support of an established enterprise software vendor, according to the distributor.
In 2005, we thought that we had a solution when Novell released Hula, an open source version of Netmail. Unfortunatly, things didn’t went too far but it ultimately led to a fork called Bongo.
GWAVA, whose videos we showed here several times in the past, has won Novell’s partner of the year award.
Held at Novell´s global kick-off event in Orlando, Florida, and attended by hundreds of Novell´s worldwide sales and marketing staff, GWAVA was awarded due to its overall exceptional work and product support for the Novell GroupWise Collaboration Community.
“Novell supports all community efforts to bring more applications to the Linux desktop,” said Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “OpenProj addresses an important customer need — the availability of an open source application for project management. As more users migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and OpenOffice.org, these users will be seeking tools like OpenProj to help them complete their daily business tasks.” — Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell
There will be a launch webcast event (www.parallels.com/launchevent) with Parallels CEO, Serguei Beloussov on Thursday (January 31) at 11 AM Eastern U.S time that will further illuminate the Parallels strategy for the next generation of virtualization products. Joining will be executives from AMD, HP, Intel, Novell and SGI.
Novell seems to be flirting with quite a few virtualisation companies at the same time, but then again, so do IBM and Red Hat. it’s all about choice. █
Coming soon is a debate on the impact of the Novell-Microsoft deal. The manager of a company whose product handles software licence compliance will take the lead. Recently, his company, which is called Black Duck, received a some attention owing to the gentle GPLv2-GPv3 clashes. It is something that this new article explores as well.
Another point Vasile makes to clients is that open source doesn’t mean anti-commercial. “That’s a big misconception,” he said. “Under the GPL, if you want to charge for software, you can. However, you then have obligations.”
Mainly, if you charge for GPL software, you must keep the core open. “If you get GPL code, modify it, and sell it, you have to give the people you sell it to the same rights you received. Your customers must be able to copy, modify, and distribute without difficulty,” he said.
This, in fact, is an interesting key point which, according to Moglen, has left Microsoft exoposed to nasty consequences. It almost makes Novell’s deal a beneficial one. And as far as risk goes, Ubuntu’s founder argues that patent trolls are the greatest threat, not predatory deals. He is also certain that Microsoft will have nothing by scare tactics to offer as a weapon.
In short, Microsoft will lose a patent trench war if they start one, and I’m sure that cooler heads in Redmond know that.
Amid the latest discussion at Groklaw, some interesting information is becoming public. To quote bits of interest:
1. Both Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza are reported to have visited Microsoft to say that the patent agreement as written isn’t acceptable, and Microsoft said itself publicly that a change was needed. Where is the rewrite? When might we expect it? What will the changes be?
[…]
3. For Novell: You promised the community that you would use your patent portfolio to protect Linux. Now you ally with this Microsoft statement, that the deal is “enabling both companies to recognize commercial value from their respective patent portfolios.” Why did you break that promise? Do you care that the majority of the FOSS community is opposed to software patents? How do you reconcile the clear intent of GPLv2 that no restrictions, such as a patent license, can be added to the GPL and what you signed?
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
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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.