Summary: A weekly roundup of Novell news that excepts GNU/Linux (SUSE)

NOVELL'S channel is said to be broken, but the Var Guy listens to Novell's chief marketing guy, who defends the channel nonetheless.

The VAR Guy: Has NOVL made any channel partner cuts in North America, elsewhere? If so, why and by how much?

Dragoon: Distribution in the Americas has been consistent year over year with the exception of adding Avnet as a Value Added Distributor. We have 5 relationships with Major Distributors in the Americas. (ATG/Arrow, Avnet, Tech Data, Synnex and Ingram).

Novell and SCO keep taking turns in court, but both companies may have a similar destination for putting their imaginary intellectual monopoly before their clients' real needs.

Finance

Novell was mentioned in very few places in the financial press and weeks after its results, these results are still being compared quite repeatedly to Red Hat's results. Novell claims that its "Linux" component is up, but Novell carries the weight of older products, so it is no Red Hat.

Virtualisation

A company near Novell deals with virtualisaion and here are Novell and PlateSpin listed separately in an article about it, despite residing under a common roof after an acquisition.

Surrey-based product and services supplier SGI holds accreditations with the likes of Microsoft, Dell, Novell, Citrix, VMware and PlateSpin.

[...]

Mark Shirman, chief executive at Massachusetts-based GlassHouse...

Mail

SKyCOM, which was mentioned here before [1, 2, 3], has released this second episode of a video that shows Novell GroupWise.



The following video has also been spread by Novell (uploaded again by Russell Dastrup, Novell's Corporate Video person).



Novell's PR people speak about it and the following item mentions GroupWise also.

The Mobile Intelligence application for BlackBerry smartphone works in conjunction with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which is compatible with all the leading messaging systems including: Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise.

Here is another case of Novell losing to Microsoft.

After a trial period by students and faculty, the new e-mail system was selected over other e-mail clients, including Novell, Zimbra, Mirapoint and Gmail.

On GroupWise support in instant-boot Linux:

And, it hooks into Microsoft Exchange, IMAP, POP and Novell GroupWise email, while delivering battery life that lasts for days, not hours. Many vendors are now offering instant boot options in laptops.

Identity Management

A press release was published which brings together many brands and companies.

Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance today announced that identity products from Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens have passed Liberty Interoperable(TM) SAML 2.0 interoperability testing.

Here is the only bit of coverage that we could find about it:

System integrators and VARs who help enterprises with their identity and access management (IAM) initiatives received just a little bit more market clarity about the interoperability of seven major vendors’ products yesterday. The Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance announced IAM products from Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens all passed the Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 test.

Novell's PR people wrote about the general subject as well.

Security

Here is a new press release where Novell raves about receiving a high rank for sign-on software. At YouTube, new videos are said to demonstrate security problems with Novell products. NetWare is still being deployed nonetheless.

The university deployed a whole gamut of Trend Micro products including: OfficeScan Client/Server Edition and Internet Security Pro for laptops and off-campus PCs; ScanMail Suite for Lotus Domino for campus email server protection; ServerProtect for Microsoft Windows/Novell NetWare for file server protection; and Control Manager for administration.

People

A Novell executive gets his profile done by the Wall Street Journal where he brags about his house.

To build his driveway, Rick Crandall had workers import a million pounds of moss rock from Utah and spend six months erecting a 28-foot-high retaining wall that hugs his steep hillside, a process that took six months and $1 million.

In short, it was a challenge—exactly what the longtime computer executive likes. Chairman of Novell Inc., the open-source server software company, Mr. Crandall tackled the construction of his 8,250-square-foot home with the same patience and means he applies to his other idiosyncratic interests.

Here is a reminder of the fact that Dell employed senior people from Novell. We saw this before.

Dell channel chief Greg Davis recently hired a channel veteran, Nancy Reynolds (previously Trend Micro and Novell) to lead their enterprise channel strategy. And they are certainly investing in training, enablement and performance incentive programs for their growing number of channel partners. But, many solution providers still vow to never "partner" with Dell, citing their historic direct-only selling model and bias.

Partners

Novell tightens its relationship with Koenig, which is about certification and examination.

Koenig is proud to announce that Koenig is now Gold Training Partner for Novell as well as offers practicum testing for Novell Exams.

Gen-i turns out to be working "closely" with Novell.

"Gen-i's effort in innovating IT in a grid-based supercomputing centre environment, leveraging cloud services model and virtual infrastructure enables real-time customer service delivery. By doing this, Gen-i has created a whole new commercial model based on the ability to create entirely self-contained environments for customers rapidly and easily," Chief Technology Advisor for IDC's Asia/Pacific Emerging Technology Council, Dr. Patrick Chan, said.

"Gen-i also differentiates in its ability to work closely with its vendor (Novell) to evolve its needs into the vendor offerings and help shape the next version of the vendor product," he said.

Novell is mentioned in this press release about ManageSoft and also the announcement of this GFI-Katharion acquisition.

The GFI hosted and edge anti-spam and anti-virus filtering solutions will work with any mail structure including Microsoft, Novell, Apple, and Linux environments.

Marketing and Other Matters

Here is a keynote talk from Tracy Smith (Novell) and a call for "Novell IT rock stars," courtesy of Novell's marketing people.

The following marketing site has Troy Monney of Novell mentioned in the context of B2B marketing.

Michael Rapp, Manager of eMedia, Fujitsu Network Communications, and Troy Monney, VP of Global Marketing Execution, Novell, separately described their approach to creating these customer profiles. But both expressed the importance of avoiding unnecessary complexity in the persona-development process.

Novell ought to focus more on engineering and less on meta-industries like marketing, which produce nothing of real use. ⬆