Novell has announced a comprehensive program and a group of technologies to help Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to build, update, configure and go to market with supported software and virtual appliances.
The company said that the SUSE Appliance Program enables ISVs to customise, a fully supported, operating system and then build and test a complete software stack. Based on top of the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, the new program enables ISVs to deliver existing applications to physical, virtual and cloud computing environments, and reduce sales cycles.
According to Novell, the program includes SUSE Studio Online, a free web-based tool that builds software appliances, and an updated, pre-formatted configuration of SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS. It provides comprehensive marketing support for ISVs and also supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 deployed on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).
Novell is also providing a technical preview of the SUSE Appliance Toolkit, a suite of tools that includes update, access and configuration management capabilities. The tools available for preview include, the SUSE Lifecycle Management Server, which handles authentication and access control for appliance vendors to distribute updates to their customers; WebYaST for web based remote configuration; and a Mono server extension which is expected to allow ISVs to leverage their existing .NET expertise to deploy applications on Linux.
Markus Rex, senior vice president and general manager of Novell Open Platform Solutions, said: Novell has taken all of our knowledge about how to build and customise an operating system and captured it for ISVs in one unique program. ISVs don’t need to be experts in Linux distributions to build their own solutions. Instead, they are now free to focus on what they do best – create a better software experience for their customers.
