Summary: News about SLES, especially as an appliance but also as a server that IBM commonly uses

SUSE (SLES)

THE NEXT WEEK will bring announcements about SLE*, but this week was mostly quiet. Here is a new video of the Novell SUSE Appliance product launch.





Speaking of appliances, the VAR Guy expects them to get a lot of attention at BrainShare 2010.

The simple answer involves the SUSE Linux Appliance program. The VAR Guy can’t go into deep details — not just yet — but there are anecdotal signs that more and more software developers are jumping on the SUSE Linux Appliance bandwagon. So-called software appliances are pre-configured combinations of an application, middleware and operating system integrated into a single image. In theory, that software appliance approach helps to speed sales cycles and software deployments.

The following Ingres press release reveals that they are growing closer to Novell because of the appliance programme that they have joined. Here is some more news coverage about it:

● Novell, Ingres partner for appliances

● Novell Expands SUSE Appliance Program With Ingres

● Novell Expands SUSE Appliance Program With Ingres

● Novell Expands SUSE Appliance Program with Ingres

● Ingres virtual appliances simplified

● Novell and Ingres announce SUSE Appliance Program agreement

● Novell Linux Appliances Boost Ingres over MySQL

Novell is expanding its SUSE Linux Appliance program by way of a new partnership with database vendor Ingres. The partnership is an effort to let ISVs rapidly package and deploy Linux based software appliances with the Ingres database.

● Novell Adds Ingres DB to SUSE Studio Online

A new template for the Ingres database eliminates the burden for IT managers of managing the life cycle of the operating system or the middleware database component within their appliances.

● Novell and Ingres team up to tempt channel

According to the two firms, the SUSE Studio Appliance Template for Ingres Database enables ISVs and SIs to reduce appliance set-up and build times by up to 80 per cent, and offer their customers a most cost-effective appliance with a fully-supported, enterprise class database and operating system.

That's quite a lot of coverage. Was it really that much of a big deal or did a PR push from Novell (and Ingres) lead to it? Novell's sponsorship of this golf tournament got some SUSE adverts spread in there. They raise brand awareness of SUSE but not GNU/Linux.

Servers are an area where GNU/Linux is massive (not necessarily in terms of revenue because of the distribution model). The Inquirer wrote about Novell's claims regarding top-tier servers but it played along with the SUSE promotion that it really was.

ACCORDING TO Novell nine out of ten of the most powerful supercomputers in the world run open source software.

The numbers come from the Top 500 supercomputers list, which shows that Linux powers nine of the top ten, and in total eighty five percent of the whole 500. In case you are wondering what this has to do with Novell, Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server runs on six of the top ten.

Another type of high-end servers is to run SLES 10 and 11:

The Origin 400 blade servers will support Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and 200, plus Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5 and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and 11.

The Future

IBM is growing closer to Novell and they also appear in this new video. Several of us at Boycott Novell opine that IBM might buy Novell's SUSE assets. IBM favours SUSE for a lot of its high-end hardware such as mainframes and it also helped Novell buy S.u.S.E. However, for IBM to buy Novell would be just a tad weird because IBM has just renewed it vows with Red Hat. IBM uses those two leaders to compete and keep the price down while not getting IBM too involved in operating system development (it goes back to the 80s).

“Several of us at Boycott Novell opine that IBM might buy Novell's SUSE assets.”"Goodbye Novell" is the title of this latest episode of The Linux Action Show. Here is the direct link to YouTube. Linux Action Show uses some graphics from Boycott Novell. It's an enjoyable episode overall. We've had our differences with the Linux Action Show [1, 2], but it wouldn't be productive to carry on with this hostility. Anyway, on April 7^th there is going to be a Webcast (planned with IDG) about Novell/SUSE and IBM. People are asked to sign up for other Webcasts, but our experience suggests that these are just live commercials.

As a side note, we cannot help wondering if this new eReader from Samsung runs Linux, in which case it is taxed by Microsoft, just like Kindle [1, 2, 3] and SLE*. ⬆