07.18.09
Novell News Summary – Part II: SCO, McAfee, and PlateSpin Migration
Zion National Park
Summary: Bits and pieces from the past week’s news
THIS has been another boring week. For those with limited time, well.. it’s a post that can be spared. As the saying roughly goes, “move along, there is nothing much to see here.”
SCO
SCO got itself deep inside fresh mud recently [1, 2, 3] and right now Groklaw reports that IBM subpoenas some more in SCO’s bankruptcy.
IBM has subpoenaed the following: Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Norfolk, Chad Kemp, Rene Beltran, and DTR Business Systems.
Other new Groklaw articles are about copyright ownership of OpenServer and SCO’s 8K.
Finance
The most interesting report is probably this one, but it requires subscription to read. It is about Novell’s backdating scandal from 2006.
A group of shareholders has decided to back away from the derivative litigation it initiated against Novell Inc. in the wake of a 2006 backdating scandal, offering the technology company’s board the chance to commence litigation instead.
Research and Markets keeps putting some papers out there and this new report mentions Novell.
For full details on Novell Inc (NOVL) click here. Novell Inc (NOVL) has Short Term PowerRatings of 6. Details on Novell Inc (NOVL) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.
Virtualisation
A press release about PlateSpin was published on the 14th, stating the details of new migration support.
WALTHAM, Mass., July 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Novell today announced the addition of physical-to-virtual migration support for Sun’s Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) in the latest version of PlateSpin(R) Migrate, the leading workload management product that enables data center managers to move workloads anywhere to anywhere: between physical, image, virtual and cloud environments.
This received coverage in a couple of Web sites, namely:
i. Migration from the Physical to the Virtual to the Cloud
Solaris 10 users, for example, are getting new physical-to-virtual migration support in Novell’s PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 management system, which takes advantage of the Solaris Containers approach to move workloads into cloud environments and back. The system uses a block-based transfer scheme that shifts only the altered portion of a file to speed up the migration process and minimize downtime. And because the system already supports SUSE Linux and Windows 2008 and Vista, and is part of the PlateSpin Workload Management system that supports VMware, XenServer and Virtual Iron, it works across heterogeneous hypervisor and hardware platforms as well.
ii. Novell targets Sun virtualization customers
The company has updated its Platespin Migrate offering, adding the ability to migrate workloads from Sun physical servers into virtual Solaris Containers
Novell Inc. is targeting Sun Microsystems Inc. customers after announcing its virtual migration software now offers physical-to-virtual support for Solaris 10 OS users.
As usual, it is mostly about GroupWise, which got itself a pretty major new client:
The Department of Commerce also consolidated its data into one instance of SAP ERP, and removed instances of Microsoft Exchange in favour of Novell Groupwise.
The out-of-date GroupWise 7 is being supported in Leicester City Council based on the following.
Existing and planned platforms include Novell Netware 6.5, Novell OES2, Novell GroupWise 7….
BlackBerry support for GroupWise is noteworthy too, but it has become quite repetitive. Here are the latest mentionings:
i. BlackBerry Tour 9630 Lands At Verizon, Sprint
The Tour integrates with BlackBerry Enterprise Server for security and IT administration features within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise.
ii. Review of Reviews: BlackBerry Tour 9630 (Verizon ) Review
BlackBerry Enterprise Server provides advanced security and IT administration features within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise environments.
Security
Some people speculated that Novell and McAfee would join forces. It goes years back. To an extent, there is now a new connection between those two companies.
Both now have McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
Local distributors Workgroup today announced that Novell and McAfee now have enhanced McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO).
This combined approach will accelerate and pinpoint response to potential threats and provide administrators with the ability to automatically enforce security and identity access-related policies.
Novell is suffering some new security issues and yet it is mentioned here.
I consider the following products to be in the SEM category: ArcSight ESM, netForensics, Novell Sentinel, Intelitactics, Cisco MARS and IBM TSOM.
Can Novell be trusted on security when its very own products cannot be secured?
People
The Mormon Times wrote about Ray Noorda or at least mentioned him.
Backup lineman Ty Mattingly may have actually hit the biggest jackpot when he hooked up early in the glory days of network company Novell, working as the prime assistant for CEO Ray Noorda.
Eric Schmidt’s interview at The Atlantic mentions his past as a Novell chief.
For the record: I’ve known Eric Schmidt since the early 1990s, in his pre-Novell and pre-Google days. He and his wife were (and are) Atlantic readers, and I met them at a book event on the west coast; our families have been friends since then.
Schmidt’s role at Novell is also mentioned in The Street.
In the 1990s, as part of Sun Microsystems (JAVA Quote) and then Novell(NOVL Quote), Schmidt had the frustration of seeing again and again how the sheer marketing power of Windows kept competitors out of the running. More recently, Schmidt befriended competitor Jerry Yang, then CEO of Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), in determining how to keep Microsoft from winning a hostile takeover attempt.
Here is another person with some history at Novell.
Tripathi is a senior software developer at Savvis, a St. Louis-based provider of managed computing and network infrastructure for IT applications. Prior to joining Savvis in 2007, he worked in senior software development positions with companies like Tripos, Elsevier and Navistar. He began his career in software development with Novell in 1997.
Partners and Competitors
Novell was mentioned very briefly right here as a competitor.
In public documents, ArcSight also cites Inellitactics and netForensics as private companies in competition with ESM. Others include CA(CA Quote), Cisco(CSCO Quote), EMC(EMC Quote), IBM(IBM Quote), Novell(NOVL Quote) and Symantec(SYMC Quote).
As a partner of some sort, Novell was also mentioned in a rather negligible way here, here, here, and here. █
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