Novell duo set off on Mountain trek

Two senior engineers involved with Novell?s Wolf Mountain clustering technology have spun off a separate company, but will continue to work on the development.

The startup ? called Wolf Mountain Group ? will focus on providing clustering technologies for Intel?s Pentium Pro and Merced-based servers, and is expected to make announcements about its strategy and products next month.

According to sources close to Novell, the relationship with the startup is friendly. Novell CEO Eric Schmidt has begun negotiations to discuss ways of keeping the technology inside Novell ? including a possible buyout of the startup.

Dominic Storey, director of technology at Novell UK, said: ?This is not without precedent. We have set up firms in the past, worked with others, maybe bought the technology back.?

He pointed out that when a group of core Novell engineers recently spun off their own company, called Superset, it was eventually bought back by Novell.

He added: ?Wolf Mountain Group is still contracted to Novell, it is still part of the clustering group. This doesn?t change the project.?

Novell first demonstrated Wolf Mountain clustering at its Brainshare developers? conference last month, but, according to Storey, the industry is unlikely to see the set of technologies incorporated into intranetware itself, or other the company?s strategic products, until the second half of next year.