The American holiday translates into fewer news stories than usual. Here they are broken down and categorised by theme.

SUSE Linux Enterprise

CIO.com has run a series of articles which provide an overview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. The articles were actually written by leaders and holder of honorable positions in the companies whose products are introduced to the reader. Novell was no exception.

SUSE Linux Enterprise: The Leading OS for Business

By Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager, Novell

Novell's Testing Festival

Some jolly good time totally geeking out in Bangalore, India.

Novell announced the close of its two-day ‘TestFest’ at its Bangalore premises. More than 130 testing professionals at Novell Software Development (I) Pvt Ltd participated in the ‘Festival of Testing’. The event was inaugurated by Mr. Naresh Shah, MD, Novell India Development Center.

"Festival" sounds better than a "marathon".

Novell's New Patents

Novell is listed among those who were awarded new patents.

● Intentional-stance characterization of a general content stream or repository. Stephen R. Carter, Spanish Fork; Delos C. Jensen, Orem. Assigned to Novell Inc., Provo. Filed Sept. 5, 2000. Patent No. 7,286,977.

● Computing environment failover in a branch office environment. Kyrt V. Nay, Mapleton; Thomas J. Brough, Highland; Scott A. Isaacson, Kamuela, Hawaii; Robert Wipfel, Draper. Assigned to Novell Inc., Provo. Filed March 20, 2003. Patent No. 7,287,083.

Virtualisation

Novell is named a competitor to VMWare, which is slightly surprising because KVM, Oracle's new VM, Xen, VirtualBox, Qemu and many others are not mentioned.

Currently the market leader, VMware effectively has no competition, though potential competitors include Microsoft, Novell, and Sun.

Novell does not just work with XenSource. SWSoft appears to be another company which Novell is close to.

The following article about Microsoft's virtualisation talks about the exclusive (exlusionary) collaboration between Microsoft and Novell.

Microsoft is working with Novell on "bidirectional virtualization" between Windows and Novell's SUSE Linux/Xen combo.

Third-party Support

Novell shifts some focus to its partners.

Novell today announced a new initiative to increase revenue and profitability for solution providers and consulting partners who specialize in selling Novell(R) technologies.

Many articles were written to explain the impact of this move. An ecosystem can be truly powerful and even vital to the existence of its core.

Here is some new software that comes to Novell's Linux.

COMDOM Software has announced new partnerships with the two leading providers of Linux based server operating systems, Redhat and Novell. These partnerships demonstrate yet another significant advantage of deploying Linux based operating systems on the server infrastructure of large enterprises and ISPs.

We mentioned DoubleCheck and Novell last week, but here's another (newer) press release that explains this technical relationship.

With the seamless integration of Identity Manager and Sentinel 6 from Novell, plus the automated financial controls test library from Greenlight Technologies, into the DoubleCheck GRC&T Enterprise Solution, DoubleCheck can address both the IT and Financial audit and testing needs of the Enterprise for any company in any industry.

New Customers

Novell has a new vanity case study which presents the story of PetroChina Liaohe Oilfield.

PetroChina Liaohe Oilfield implemented Novell€® ZENworks€® Desktop Management for more than 1,000 PCs, significantly reducing routine administration for its IT team while improving availability and security for users. The Novell solution automates the distribution of software patches and frees non-specialist staff in local offices from the burden of providing IT support.

Another story come from Watts Water Technologies, which has evidently adopted Novell in a big way.

The 8,000 employees of Watts Water Technologies make innovative products to control the efficiency, safety and quality of water within residential, commercial and institutional applications. To support its new ERP software, Watts Water Technologies chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop for use in a thin-client deployment.

Having posted these stories, which show that we do not turn a blind eye to success, we shall resume the boycott of Novell. ⬆