Novell BrainShare 2008 kickoff: New SUSE, new roadmap, new pals

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com expert Sander van Vugt blogs from Novell BrainShare in this post.

At the annual Novell BrainShare user conference that started in Salt Lake City today, Novell unveiled its roadmap and loaded the car with new friends. The roadmap includes a new strategy focused on agility, called Fossa, and a new release of SUSE: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Joining Novell for the trip will be new partners bearing products such as SAP, PlateSpin and Atos Origin.

Focussing on SLE 11, Novell’s CTO Jeff Jaffe talked about product features, but mostly about development plans. Novell wants to leverage the OpenSUSE network, communicating better with the open source comunity, an area where Novell hasn’t been particularly successful lately.

Another new development is the joint solutions that Novell is going to develop with PlateSpin. These solutions will add important features that are currently lacking, such as P2V and V2P in the Xen stack that is offered by SUSE Linux.

Also very important for Novell is that it has extended its partnership with ERP vendor SAP. According to SAP’s Pat Hume, SAP has chosen to work with Novell because it is the fastest growing enterprise-level Linux vendor.

With these developments, Novell is bolstering its position as the vendor in charge where open source software meets enterprise needs. I’ll be here all week reporting on developments.

BrainShare is being talked about elsewhere in the blogosphere. The VAR guy notes that the Microsoft-Novell partnership is a rancorous marriage, as Novell is still pursuing its anti-monopoly suit against Microsoft. Reporting from BrainShare on Sunday, March 16, blogger Richard Bliss saw some clamor around a CRM product, at least as much clamor as a small crowd could muster.