The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company outlined SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 at its BrainShare event in Salt Lake City, where it also promised to support NetWare indefinitely and previewed the next two releases in its Open Enterprise Server Roadmap, amongst other things.
With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop announced at CeBit earlier this month, much of the attention was focused on server enhancements, with Novell’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, Jeff Jaffe, proclaiming it to be the most advanced Linux servers ever.
VP of Linux development, Eric Anderson, was evidently enthused by being able to announce that Novell would be first to market with support for XenSource Inc’s Xen 3.0 virtualization hypervisor technology, despite rival Red Hat Inc’s recent press conference.
We are first, he proclaimed, as while Red Hat got its announcement in before Novell, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will ship in the summer, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 is scheduled for the end of the year.
Novell’s chairman and CEO, Jack Messman, also noted that support for Xen 3.0 will be delivered by Novell a full half year before our competition, while Anderson noted that Novell is one of the top contributors to the Xen project, with more than four times the contributions of any other Linux vendor.
With Red Hat recently talking about the need for virtual machine configuration and management, Anderson also outlined how SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 will enable users to configure virtual machines through the YaST tool.
Other advances in the server version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 will include application-level security via the AppArmor code that Novell acquired with Immunix Inc in May 2005 and released under an open source license in January this year.
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The SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 code will form the basis for all Novell’s future Linux products, as well as Open Enterprise Server, and the company’s new Open Workgroup Suite. The latter is due for release in early May and will bundle together Novell’s various products for workgroup deployment.
The package will include Open Enterprise Server with Linux and NetWare, the Novell ZENworks systems management suite, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite.
Open Enterprise Server was released in March 2005 and provides an upgrade path for existing NetWare users to move to Linux. While Novell maintained that the company will not be rushing them, with Messman announcing that it will support NetWare 6.5 indefinitely, the company also previewed some updates to OES.
The next release, codenamed Cypress is due for release in mid-2007 and will contain functionality such as virtualization, being delivered with SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, as well as advanced integration with Active Directory and Novell’s eDirectory. That will be followed by a version known as Ponderosa that will follow with additional collaborative services.
Other major announcements made by Novell on the opening morning of BrainShare included a partnership with Dell Inc to deliver Novell ZENworks 7 Linux Management – Dell Edition as the PC and server vendor’s Linux server management platform of choice.
Novell also announced that GroupWise Mobile Server, powered by Intellisync, is now in beta testing, while Research In Motion Inc in planning to release BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 for Novell GroupWise.
GroupWise Mobile Server is the result of an agreement with Intellisync Corp in November 2005, just days before the mobile middleware player agreed to be acquired by Nokia Corp.
