Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell claimed at its BrainShare event in Barcelona, Spain that it is enjoying growing adoption in both public and private sectors, with new Novell Linux Desktop customers including SEB Eesti Uhispank, the largest bank in Estonia, German automotive logistics solutions provider ARS Altmann, and the Norwegian municipality of Baerum.
Transactional, engineering, and fixed-function workstations are typical of the kind of desktop that are being moved to Linux at this stage, and Baerum’s project to move 40 schools from Windows to Linux is indicative of the approach being taken. While we don’t expect to move every user in our enterprise to Linux desktops, we believe we can achieve real savings by starting to move users in education, said Siri Opheim, IT manager for Baerum.
Baerum’s pilot project has already used Novell’s Linux Desktop, with the migration expected to begin at the end of 2005. ARS Altmann has similarly been evaluating Novell Linux Desktop, and is scheduled to start its first roll-out in October.
Novell also used Brain Share to highlight success for its Open Enterprise Server Linux/NetWare product, stating that it has shipped over 5 million OES licenses to 4,000 new and existing customers since its release in March.
Novell also pointed to some developments for the product, which 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.
Future enhancements will include the support for NetWare applications running in a virtual machine on Linux, workgroup collaboration enhancements, Kerberos authentication, NetWare and Windows migration tools, and the ability to run OES on 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. No date was given for these developments.
Novell also announced a new customer win for OES in the form of TAG Aviation, which is using OES a stepping-stone from NetWare to Linux, as well as a new beta version of Novell Identity Manager, including a visual designer for advanced workflow, and a new self-service application.
