Novell bundles into bed with Linux
Vendor to launch network services for Red Hat and SuSE later this year
Novell resellers received a much needed boost last week, when the software vendor said it will launch a bundle of its network services running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server later this year.
The firm also announced that in 2004 the entire services stack from NetWare will be running on Linux.
The launch of the package, called Novell Nterprise Linux Services, will give resellers an opportunity to sell to Microsoft and Linux users as well as Novell customers, the company said.
Johan Rosius, Novell's European director of market sales, said: "For customers this announcement means choice, and for resellers it means they can offer that choice to any customer, not just Novell customers. The opportunity for resellers is in upgrading to NetWare 6.5."
Rosius said Novell's strategy will be attractive to customers that were considering leaving Novell, and to Microsoft customers too.
"The end of Microsoft support for NT4 puts customers at a crossroads," Rosius said. "They must evaluate their next steps. They will see this as an opportunity to test the Linux services."
He added that Novell will offer the same support and training for the Linux products as for existing products, and is building migration methodologies to share with resellers. This is likely to begin at the BrainShare Europe conference in September.
By allowing customers to run NetWare services on Linux, the company hopes to stabilise NetWare's market share and attract new customers.
Novell said version 6.5 of NetWare, due in August, and Nterprise Linux Services will provide parallel paths for NetWare and Linux users until they meet at NetWare 7, when the complete Novell services set will run on both platforms.
Eddy Alejos, technical director at reseller Dynax, said that while Novell skills have been declining, Linux is a very popular operating system.
"Novell is suffering because the tide of popularity is against it. Other than getting into bed with Microsoft this is the next best thing," he said.