Novell Inc has paid an undisclosed amount for a stake in IBM Corp’s well-regarded NetObjects Inc web authoring tool company. It plans to bundle NetObjects’ Fusion 3.0 design suite with its NetWare for Small Business 4.2 network operating system, due to ship by year-end. NetObjects, 51%-owned by Big Blue, will be the latest in a succession of object and net technology companies that Novell has made small investments in from its internet equity fund. With former Object Management Group CEO Chris Stone on board as VP strategy it’s little wonder. Poet Software and ObjectSpace are among its other investments. Meantime, Novell has stepped up its network security and firewall campaign and is offering new 3.0 versions of its BorderManager firewall and VPN applications with enhanced services. The firewall application provides NDS directory-based policy management, while VPN offers secure connections between virtual private network nodes. They’re available standalone or bundled with a BorderManager Enterprise 3.0 suite that is now in beta testing, and which also includes an implementation of the Internet Engineering Task Force’s eponymous Radius remote authentication dial-in user service and caching.
