Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Pulse Beta and Many New Adverts

Summary: Novell's proprietary news from the week of BrainShare 2010

THIS week was mostly about BrainShare 2010 and Bob Sutor turns out to have given a talk at BrainShare.



On Tuesday morning, March 23, at 10:30 in Salt Lake City, Jean Staten Healy and I will be presenting a talk called “Linux as a Catalyst for a Smarter Planet” at Novell’s BrainShare conference. The talk is coded as SPR201 and will be in room 150 G.


Here are Microsoft boosters belittling Novell in their Windows fan sites which pretend to be news sites. It's about AD's birthday.

Pulse



Novell finally issued this press release about the beta version of Pulse.

Novell said it will make Pulse, its enterprise social networking tool, available for beta testing this week.


Apart from the word from Novell (PR message), several other Web sites have covered it [1, 2, 3, 4] and there is also a promotional video.



The following new video is in Russian and the Pulse segment starts almost 4 minutes from the start.



People who attended BrainShare got an account.

At the annual Novell Brainshare user's conference this week, Novell announced it was providing attendees with a Novell Pulse account and five invitations, which they can use to bring colleagues on board. Pulse is a cloud-based collaboration platform, which we first covered last year in a One on one interview with Ken Muir of Novell.


How does that compare to Google's Wave? CMSWire decided to ponder and question the viability of this entirely new paradigm that resembles others.

Perhaps Google Wave would've gotten more attention if the initial focus was on the enterprise rather than the consumer. Here to test that theory is Novell and their new Wave-like platform called Novell Pulse. It's social, you can chat with it and collaborate on documents with colleagues, but its focus is on the business side of things.


SAP and Microsoft develop proprietary equivalents and the following post mentions Pulse along with Microsoft.

For on premises, Microsoft promotes Office Communications Server. The next release, slated for sometime in 2010, is filled with social media capabilities. The effort reminds me a bit of Novell Pulse, a corporate social media and collaboration platform that Novell will soon promote to hosting providers.


Here is an audio interview with Ken Muir from Novell, who speaks about the same subject at IDG.

Keith Shaw talks with Ken Muir from Novell about ways IT can help improve real-time collaboration efforts.


More audio from the same site can be found here and it's about Novell's fate (affecting the stock). This link from IDG UK lead to an article which was mentioned before.

SCO



The SCO case is long and complex. It would be easy to resolve (dismiss), but SCO gets money to carry on with the smears, which mostly repeat themselves over and over again. Groklaw is the main site that covers this case and some of the latest articles are:

Week 2, Day 10 of SCO v. Novell - Chris Stone, O'Gara, Maciaszek, Nagle

APA's "Included Assets" Did Not List SVR4.2 - Research Project

SCO vs. Linux: The jury has been informed

The second week in the Salt Lake City jury trial between the SCO Group and Novell about the copyright to Unix has uncovered further surprising details of this never-ending story. First, SCO's former CEO Darl McBride, who was called as a witness, confirmed that SCO didn't need the debated copyrights for the development of its family of operating systems, and that the copyrights were only required for the licensing business of the vendor's SCOSource division. Then the previously unaware jury members were informed that a judge had already delivered a ruling in this matter, but that his decision had been overturned. The trial will go into its third week while, at the same time, Novell's Brainshare conference will be held in Salt Lake City.


SCO looks to make a comeback (also in here)

Dogged by ongoing legal costs and courtroom setbacks, the company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2007. Throughout the bankruptcy process, SCO has said that it would continue to appeal the cases against IBM, Novell and others.


For the Lawyers, It Was a Working Weekend

Week 3, Day 11 SCO v. Novell - SCO Rests after Tibbitts, Novell Begins with LaSala

Novell Motion to Strike Damages Testimony After June 9, 2004 & Reply to Objections to Braham Testimony

Week 3, Day 12 in SCO v. Novell - Tolonen, Amadia

The Parties Tweak the Jury Instructions in SCO v. Novell

Week 3, Day 13 in SCO v. Novell - Jones, Messman, DeFazio, Braham - Updated

Today at the SCO v. Novell trial, Novell called Gregory Jones, and then SCO called Jack Messman as a hostile witness. His deposition was played in part earlier, but this was Mr. Messman testifying live. Then the Michael DeFazio deposition video was played. And then Novell called Tor Braham. Only two more days, and then it goes to the jury.


Novell Files Motion for Judgment and Motion to Strike - Denied - Updated as text

Novell has filed two motions today, one for a judgment on SCO's slander of title claim -- the promised Rule 50(a) motion -- and one to strike testimony inconsistent with the unambiguous contract language.

Novell points out that the only evidence SCO presented regarding malice is testimony by Maureen O'Gara of a conversation with Chris Stone, and no one corroborates her story, first of all, and second, O'Gara admitted she can't recall exactly what was said in the conversation with Chris Stone. She merely surmised things. And that's not clear and convincing evidence. No reasonable jury could find personal malice in the picture, so Novell says as a matter of law, judgment should be granted as a matter of law on SCO's claim for punitive damages.


SCO, Novell suit goes to jury

The contract between Novell and Santa Cruz contained ambiguous language about the sale of copyrights that is at the center of the dispute being aired before the jury.


Week 3, Day 14 SCO v. Novell Trial - Braham, Bradford, Musika, and Judge: 'the End is Nigh'

Novell Moves for Judgment on Slander; SCO Moves to Limit Closing Argument

NetWare



"Novell drops NetWare support," says this report which is complemented by another that says: "Novell drops NetWare support: What do millions of users do?"

Novell has announced that general support for NetWare (on physical machines) will end this month. This includes Open Enterprise Server and Open Enterprise Server 2 on NetWare.


 

Novell has announced that general support for NetWare (on physical machines) will end this month. This includes Open Enterprise Server and Open Enterprise Server 2 on NetWare. Novell, however, is providing extended support for these users through March 2012. Customers continue to receive general support for NetWare 6.5 running as a virtualized operating system under Xen on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). In addition, customers that migrate their NetWare systems to Open Enterprise Server 2 on SLES continue to receive general support. NetWare services include iPrint, iFolder, directory services via eDirectory, and more.


Novell's cash cows are dying. What's next then? A sale of the company?

Virtualisation



Is Novell ditching Xen? It seems possible.

The news caused many pundits to proclaim that Novell was taking its first steps toward abandoning Xen altogether. This would be especially odd, since it was only in February that Novell and Citrix announced that they were partnering on virtualization, an extension of a year-od partnership between the two for Xen. The news in February was that Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was certified as a "Perfect Guest" running on Citrix XenServer and both companies will provide joint technical support to customers.


There are some new potential contradictions and from the 'Microsoft media' at 1105 Media we learn about special/preferential treatment for Novell. Is Novell moving to KVM? Perhaps only partially at the expense of other options?

With the announcement of the upcoming summer release of Service Pack 1 (SP1), Novell will officially support the KVM virtualisation solution in version 11 of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). Support for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine was already included as a "technology preview" in SLES 11, however, with SP1, Novell will offer official support for guest systems including SLES 9 to 11, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, XP and Vista, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 and 5.


Novell's own hype around intelligent workload management (IWM) carries on:

Novell is so confident of the market for intelligent workload management that it is restructuring its business around the technology. But what exactly does it do and why is it needed?

In December 2009, Novell announced a restructure of its business to facilitate its belief that intelligent workload management (IWM) will play a major role in its future.

IWM might be an unfamiliar term in the world of virtual enterprise management, but Novell believes it is a technology that will help to allay fears about the security of cloud computing operations.


This is a new product without any success stories that Novell publishes.

Mail



Novell's GroupWise is being promoted by Novell staff and supported by third parties such as ZyLAB:

Information access technology provider ZyLab (news, site) has just upgraded its email management software so that client companies will be able to archive directly from Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.


GroupWise support is not exclusive in this case.

Here is the press release from MessageSolution which still supports GroupWise (migration) and also a migration away from GroupWise.

Lincoln Property Company, a real estate management firm based in Dallas, Texas, has about 4,000 employees scattered throughout the U.S. CIO Jay Kinney just moved almost 1,000 of them to Google Apps, ditching Novell GroupWise in the process. Kinney said he ran the numbers and Google came out ahead. His users are already spread far and wide, so managing the system remotely was a natural fit.


There is more information about it here.

Here is a new video about mail and Novell.



Management



Based on the recent press release, the following item was issued.

Callidus Software, a provider of sales performance management solutions, has announced that Novell, a provider of infrastructure software solutions, has implemented Callidus Monaco's objective management solution to develop and manage its management by objectives or MBO programs.


Novell's PR people have published many guest posts about identity management [1, 2, 3] and later on we'll show new video commercials.

Security



Apart from a couple of SUSE items [1, 2] there was nothing to see here really.

People & Partners



Masahiro Morimoto, with historical Novell ties, becomes a vice president at Webroot.

Webroot, a leading Internet security provider for the consumer, enterprise and SMB markets, today announced it has appointed Masahiro Morimoto to the new role of vice president, Asia-Japan.

[...]

Morimoto has also established and managed subsidiary operations of several major software companies, including Digital Research (acquired by Novell in 1991), Sony Microsystems (a division of Sony America) and Xerox. In addition, as vice president of Novell, Morimoto developed the company's system technology for non-conventional Novell business environments including the retail, office-automation market and production-automation markets.


Here are some Novell partners that can be seen as worthy of a mention, at least based on Novell.

Mainline – Data Center specialized partner Paragon Development Systems – End-User Computing specialized partner Deloitte – Identity and Security specialized partner Agilysys – Rising Star partner Infosys – Rising Star partner


Infosys is an interesting one because of its very strong ties with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15].

Another new/advanced partner is Compendium Education Center.

Compendium Education Center has been awarded with the status of a „Novell Training Services Partner - Platinum level".


Mainline also receives honours (to be found here too).

As a leading IBM Premier Business Partner, and the largest System z partner, Mainline has helped more than 150 System z customers install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, creating customized virtualization and workload management solutions.


Novell gets mentioned in relation to Mercury Solutions a couple of times [1, 2]. Nothing fascinating or significant here.

Marketing



To coincide with BrainShare, Novell's own staff has released many advertisements that we put here in no particular order.

Novell Identity Manager Man - Skydive



Novell Identity Manager Man: Night Club



Thats Intelligent: Geek vs Geek - Dance Club



Thats Intelligent: Geek vs Geek - Robot Wars



Novell has also made available some more case studies for proprietary software and a bit of SUSE [1, 2, 3, 4]. That's all for now.

Recent Techrights' Posts

With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries
Links 26/03/2024: Inflation Problems, Strikes in Finland
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Losing Children, Carbon Tax Discussed
Links for the day
Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 26/03/2024: 6,000 Layoffs at Dell, Microsoft “XBox is in Real Trouble as a Hardware Manufacturer”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Microsofters Still Trying to 'Extend' Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Look What IBM's Red Hat is Turning CentOS Into
For 17 years our site ran on CentOS. Thankfully we're done with that...
The Julian Paul Assange Verdict: The High Court Has Granted Assange Leave to Appeal Extradition to the United States, Decision Adjourned to May 20th Pending Assurances
The decision is out
The Microsoft and Apple Antitrust Issues Have Some But Not Many Commonalities
gist of the comparison to Microsoft
ZDNet, Sponsored by Microsoft for Paid-for Propaganda (in 'Article' Clothing), Has Added Pop-Up or Overlay to All Pages, Saying "813 Partners Will Store and Access Information on Your Device"
Avoiding ZDNet may become imperative given what it has turned into
Julian Assange Verdict 3 Hours Away
Their decision is due to be published at 1030 GMT
People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him.
Overworking Kills
The body usually (but not always) knows best
Former Red Hat Chief (CEO), Who Decided to Leave the Company Earlier This Month, Talks About "Cloud Company Red Hat" to CNBC
shows a lack of foresight and dependence on buzzwords
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 25, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Discord Does Not Make Money, It's Spying on People and Selling Data/Control (38% is Allegedly Controlled by the Communist Party of China)
a considerable share exists
In At Least Two Nations Windows is Now Measured at 2% "Market Share" (Microsoft Really Does Not Want People to Notice That)
Ignore the mindless "AI"-washing
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Still Has Hundreds of Thousands of Simultaneously-Online Unique Users
The scale of IRC