The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company has announced that Munich will migrate many of its existing NetWare servers to Open Enterprise Server in the next few months as it looks to support its LiMux desktop migration project.
Released in March, OES contains NetWare 7.0 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0, as well as common communication, collaboration, and application services, and a common management interface, giving users a choice of file, print, directory, and management technologies, and NetWare customers a migration path to Linux.
The NetWare upgrade is not actually part of the celebrated LiMux project, which sees the German city migrating 14,000 desktops from Windows to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, but it will be used to help Munich make the change.
Novell missed out on the desktop contract despite SUSE Linux, which it acquirred last year, being heavily involved in the early trial stages in 2003. A joint bid from SUSE Linux and IBM was instrumental in convincing Munich to consider alternatives to Windows and Microsoft Office.
As previously announced, Munich eventually plumped for the Debian distribution, and two local Linux services firms, Gonicus and Softcon, for the desktop migration.
