02.07.09
Novell News Summary – Part II: Virtualisation, GWAVACon, GroupWise and More
Finance
NOVELL’S financial results for this quarter are due in about a fortnight and it seems likely that Novell will announce layoffs around this time.
Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL) will issue a press release providing an overview of financial results for its first fiscal quarter 2009 on Thursday, February 26, 2009, at 4 pm ET.
Virtualisation
When Novell does not help Microsoft distort the virtualisation market it quite successfully works with some other products and companies. Here is one example about Xenocode.
And Xenocode-virtualized applications can be deployed over the Internet, intranets, USB devices, and existing desktop management infrastructure. The technology was even licensed by Novell back in September of 2008 and is being leveraged in Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization.
I should note that my previous work with these tools showed that the method of enabling interaction between otherwise separated applications is a useful distinguishing point that is well worth adding to your evaluation criteria. The last time I looked, Novell’s ZENworks Application Virtualization (actually Xenocode’s product family) did this the best.
We’ve mentioned Xenocode in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Here is some more information about Novell and VMware:
VMware on Tuesday announced VMware View Open Client and claimed that it advances its vClient Initiative toward universal clients.
The new software, available under the GNU Lesser GPL 2.1, enables IT to host and manage user desktops in the datacenter, and lets partners use the source code to tailor and optimize devices for creating virtual desktop solutions, the company said.
[...]
VMware View Open Client features secure tunneling via SSL, two-factor authentication in the form of RSA SecurID, Novell SLETC Add-on RPM package, and a command-line interface.
Also on VMware:
VMware has released an open source virtual desktop infrastructure client, aiming to make it easy for partners to build their own applications or devices around its code. The goal eventually is to make possible a “universal client” that will support multiple environments.
[...]
Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface.
GWAVACon ended very quietly (almost too quietly) and here is a press release that came from there.
GWAVA, Novell’s largest collaboration partner, announced today at GWAVACon in Las Vegas the availability of Reload 3, the latest version of the top selling disaster recovery and backup solution for Novell GroupWise. The new version focuses on speed of data collection and recovery in times of crisis.
Novell has a hard time denying the demise of GroupWise, which will soon get a lift from iPhone.
For those of you not using and iPhone, this also means you can sync to on supported devices too, such as the Palm Centro, Palm Pre, Palm Treo Pro and other Windows Mobile devices and Symbian OS.
Adium turns out to have GroupWise messaging support as well.
Final verdict: Although it supports several messaging protocols (including the corporate environment networks Novell GroupWise and Lotus Sametime), Adium lacks webcam conferencing.
“The data stays on-site at corporate headquarters, but management of that server takes place by Azaleos. We take the headache out of the product, but do not force the customer to push the data up into the cloud,” Gode said. “The other thing we get are customers looking to migrate from a [lower] level of Exchange, 2000 or 2003, to 2007. As part of that migration, they don’t want to do it themselves. Or they’re migrating from [Novell] GroupWise or [Lotus] Notes and they don’t want to do it or they don’t have the expertise in-house. They don’t want to hire or train for Exchange,” Gode said.
Security
The serious security problems in GroupWise were already mentioned last week [1, 2], but here are some more details.
Novell has released updates for GroupWise to close a number of vulnerabilities. One critical issue is a buffer overflow in the GroupWise Internet Agent (GWIA), which can be manipulated to allow the injection and execution of code. Other updates close issues with cross-site scripting, Cross-Site Request Forgery and Script Insertion gaps.
There was also a SUSE issue.
Identity Management
Novell found a client in Johnsonville Sausage (also published here and here). Well, it’s better than Sesame Street [1, 2, 3], right?
Wisconsin-based Johnsonville Sausage, the number-one national brand of brats, Italian sausage, smoked-cooked links and fresh breakfast sausage links, has implemented Novell® identity and endpoint management solutions to achieve a single point of control for thousands of employee and partner digital identities and more than 600 desktop systems. By automating identity management with Novell solutions, Johnsonville Sausage has reduced user management time and costs by 80 percent.
People
Based on this news report, SiCortex turns up to be headed by a former Novell executive, so in case SiCortex and Novell make some deal in the future, it’s worth bearing in mind.
SiCortex has 84 employees and is headed up by CEO Chris Stone, a former Novell executive responsible for engineering and product management from 2002 to 2004.
Novell and SiteScape are close [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and their link is explained in the following new article:
The initial reception for the tags has been positive, particularly in the aerospace and defense industries, according to Tego founder and CEO Timothy Butler, who also founded collaboration software maker SiteScape Inc. in Maynard, which was sold to Novell Inc. in 2007. Airplane manufacturers Airbus SAS and Boeing Co. are in the process of evaluating the tags, according to Butler, though he declined to discuss the details of the relationships. The Department of Defense has also expressed interest in the company’s system, he said.
Partners
Here is another technical umbrella that has Novell underneath it:
OASIS Approves 9 New Web Services Standards
[...]
Among the organizations involved in approving the standards were IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, BMC, CA, Intel, Nokia, Novell, Progress Software, Red Hat, SAP, SOA Software, Software, TIBCO, VeriSign and the U.S. Veterans Health Administration.
Marketing
This video has just shown up in YouTube.
Enjoy. █
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