Summary: Another loss for Novell and odd new moves in mail and virtualisation

NOVELL is increasingly being dumped for Google and several days ago we found another new example:

Students and faculty alike who have been growing frustrated with Novell Tigermail should soon be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

The university's current e-mail client will be replaced with Google Apps for Education. The shift will not require anyone to change their e-mail addresses.

They should host their own mail. Sharing people's private correspondence with some dissociated company is neither wise nor fair. But that's another story.

One of the OpenSUSE folks writes about Bongo, which is a mail project that's derived from what Novell buried [1, 2] after it had signed the deal with Microsoft (see this story about Zimbra, which is now owned by former Microsoft executives at VMware).

I'll take Bongo as my first example. For those that have no idea what Bongo is let me explain: Bongo is an evolution of some forward thinking by some people who used to work at Novell. It started out as the Hula Project; then Novell sold the related assets off due to strategy alignments (or whatever); a few of us wanted to continue and forked the code and created the Bongo Project. OK so that's a brief history but what is it? Bongo is a lightweight and simple e-mail & calendaring solution, it is based on proven technology – the heritage goes back to NIMS if I'm not mistaken. Whoopee do there are like a million and one e-mail solutions out there. Yes but not all in one solutions that are light on resources and contain all functions. Bongo is NOT a groupware product, it is aimed at SMBs, geeks education and pretty much anyone that just wants e-mail, calendaring and contacts. Think of it as a FOSS solution to provide the functionality of Gmail+Google Calendar. Here endeth the history lesson.

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I know for a fact that there may be one or two items that I've listed that could be contentious, and do you know what? I sincerely hope so :-) Now don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate and am grateful for all the work effort and money that Novell has invested in openSUSE; but it isn't fair at all for Novell to keep carrying the Project. If anyone thinks they're not, you are living in lala land. Sure some of it might be their own doing, but a lot isn't and it is up to us the community help them so that we can benefit even more.

OpenSUSE has been eerily quiet since Zonker left.

Going back to VMware and Zimbra, see the following posts about EMC and Microsoft:

• Theory: Why EMC Gave VMWare to Microsoft (Employee)
• Microsoft Could Enter EMC from the Back Door
• Perspective on EMC and Microsoft (and what it means to GNU/Linux)
• Maritz and Tucci's Microsoft Slog Against VMware
• Fortify, EMC and Microsoft's Coalitions Against GNU/Linux

To cut a long story short, EMC has VMware, which has Zimbra. Now there is this new press release which shows EMC supporting a direct rival of its very own Zimbra:

EMC Helps Define Information Governance for Microsoft Exchange 2010

EMC€® Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced it is expanding its efforts to help customers accelerate their journey to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 implementations and build actionable information governance strategies. Exchange 2010-ready, EMC SourceOne™ solutions further extend the archiving, retention, and e-discovery features of Exchange 2010, allowing organizations to manage their e-mail and other data efficiently and cost effectively while ensuring that all information is protected and available.

That's a little iffy. Doesn't EMC support Zimbra? Let's remember that EMC is Microsoft's Partner of the Year for 2008 and so is Citrix, which has just partnered with Novell. From the press release:

Citrix Systems, Inc. and Novell, Inc. announced a collaboration that expands choice for customers through increased virtualization interoperability and new assessment tools to help pinpoint the economically most advantageous approach to virtualization. Through this new partnership, Novell has certified SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a Perfect Guest running on Citrix XenServer and both companies will provide joint technical support to customers. As a result of this agreement, the more than 4,500 enterprise applications certified as Novell Ready for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are now Citrix Ready community-verified when running in a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server guest virtual machine on XenServer.

[...]

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the only Linux operating system that has been optimized to be the perfect guest on all major hypervisors, with outstanding performance when running on XenServer.

That last sentence is a strong and ambitious claim, but Microsoft's support for SUSE can count for something extra (from Novell's point of view). The above can also be found right here in Reuters and some other sources, but what's even more interesting is Novell's apparent attempt to catch up with Red Hat where Xen is involved. Novell already builds a Wiki about what seems like a KVM hypervisor.

Believe it or not, it looks as though Novell is now researching the creation of yet another virtualization platform. No, this one isn't based on Xen. Instead, the software company appears to be jumping on the KVM bandwagon and is looking to build a new open source project based on KVM.

Well, KVM is Red Hat's, which makes it just slightly awkward. ⬆