SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas

SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 has shipped and is now available!! http://www.novell.com/linux

Overview:

* SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the highly reliable, scalable and secure server operating system that powers your physical and virtual workloads. Featuring the fastest Linux update stack, diskless server capabilities, Green IT innovations that lower your power consumption, and performance optimizations to run as a virtual guest on VMware, Xen and Hyper-V, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server sets the standard for enterprise-class server computing.

* SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop delivers dozens of essential applications and seamless interoperability with your existing systems, while providing an easy-to-use and highly secure desktop experience. With application and multimedia enhancements, Green IT innovations that reduce desktop power usage, and maximum interoperability with Microsoft Office and Exchange, it will help you lower costs and increase productivity.

Full press release: http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-ships-suse-linux-enterprise-11/

Key Themes:

• World-class Partner Ecosystem
• Advanced Linux Management
• Ubiquity: Linux how you want it, where you want it
• Interoperability: Leverage existing IT investments
• Mission-Critical Computing: Designed to support your most important business needs

Learn more at our live events  –  http://www.novell.com/evolutiontour

Novell announces first open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight

The Mono® Project, an open-source initiative sponsored by Novell, today announced the availability of Moonlight™ 1.0. The first and only open source project that provides Linux* users access to Microsoft* Silverlight* content, Moonlight demonstrates Novell’s commitment to making Linux a first-class platform for multimedia and Rich Internet Applications. Moonlight provides the platform Linux users need to use Silverlight and Windows* Media content. In combination with Banshee™, a Novell-sponsored project to produce an open source media player, Moonlight is part of a complete multimedia solution on Linux.

“Microsoft Silverlight offers the most comprehensive and powerful solution for the creation and delivery of rich internet applications and media experiences, and is used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “We have worked with the Moonlight team and Novell to enable interoperability between Windows and Linux platforms and extend the high-quality interactive Web and video experience for the benefit of the Linux community.”

Available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE®, SUSE® Linux Enterprise, Fedora*, Red Hat*, and Ubuntu*, this release is in part a result of the existing technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell that extends interoperability between Windows and Linux. Windows Media Video (.wmv), Windows Media Audio (.wma) and MP3 files are supported through the Microsoft Media Pack, a Microsoft-delivered set of media codecs that brings optimized and licensed decoders to every Linux user using Moonlight. Additionally, it allows developers to write Rich Internet Applications for multiple platforms.

Moonlight has already proven useful to tens of thousands of Linux users. A pre-release of Moonlight was delivered on January 19, 2009 to allow Linux users to stream Barack Obama’s Inauguration. More than 20,000 Linux users downloaded Moonlight to watch the Silverlight broadcast.

“Moonlight brings the benefits of Silverlight’s popular multimedia content to Linux viewers,” said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Developer Platform vice president at Novell. “This first release delivers on the goal of breaking down barriers to multimedia content and creating parity in the user’s viewing experience regardless of whether the user is on Windows or Linux.”

The Moonlight 1.0 release is part of a technical collaboration announced by Novell and Microsoft in September of 2007. Microsoft has provided Novell with access to its test suites for Silverlight, and provides Linux end users of Moonlight with free access to the Microsoft Media Pack, a set of licensed media codecs for video and audio.

For more information on Moonlight, visit go-mono.com/moonlight. To learn more about open source projects that Novell sponsors and contributes to, visit www.novell.com/linux/opensource.

About the Mono Project

The Mono Project is an open source initiative sponsored by Novell to develop a UNIX* version of the Microsoft .NET development framework. Hosted at www.mono-project.com, the Mono project provides all the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris*, Mac* OS X*, Windows and Unix. Mono has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

SalesTalks are for the busy sales and technical pre-sales professional or anyone who could use a few concise and quotable talking points when discussing the merits of using SLE in their environment.

In this episode of Novell Sales Talk, I’m joined by Cameron Seader, one of our top support pro’s for a discussion of what is new and cool in the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Version 11.  Cameron’s perspective as someone who deals with customers all day long and knows the insides of the code is very helpful in understanding what the impact of many of the new features mean, and what’s changed to improve the customer’s experience.

If you have any suggestions or comments about SalesTalk topics or past shows, please email them to ross (at) novell.com.

Podcast: Novell Sales Talk – Why Upgrade to SLE 11

• Novell SalesTalk Home
• Novell SalesTalk Linux Home

Enjoy,

RossB

From the Press Release:

In part 2 of a 2 part series, we discuss SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 2 and how it fares against the competition, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the number of competitive differentiators SP2 brings to the table.

SalesTalks are for the busy sales and technical pre-sales professional or anyone who could use a few concise and quotable talking points when discussing the merits of using SLE in their environment.

If you have any suggestions or comments about SalesTalk topics or past shows, please email them to ross (at) novell.com.

• Novell SalesTalk Home
• Novell SalesTalk Linux Home
• SLE 10 SP2 P2 – Positioning Against the Competition
  

Enjoy,

RossB

At least that’s what I hope like heck this all means!

From the Press Release:

Transitive technology is currently included as part of the IBM PowerVMTM software designed to help customers consolidate their x86 Linux workloads onto IBM Systems. IBM is seeing a growing trend of customers migrating from under-utilized servers to IBM Systems, including onto mainframe and Power Systems. The company is committed to developing additional tools and solutions to make migrations even easier, while minimizing the risk and increasing the financial returns for clients as they consolidate and virtualize to achieve significant business benefit.

Notice my emphasis added above, for years we have lusted after having the ability to run native x86 applications and workloads inside VM’s on Mainframes.  If this carefully-worded press release does contain the seeds of this capability, this is great news.

RossB

I love these videos from the IBM Marketing folks for System z, they’re a mix of the Office and corporate training videos we’ve all seen. I’ll post the rest of these, or just follow the links on their pages to get the rest of these.

For our own funny and informative videos, visit the NovellVideo Youtube Channel.

Enjoy,

RossB

From the SearchEnterpriseLinux.com article…

While most computer science students learn skills on x86 servers, their counterparts at the University of Arkansas will now get hands-on experience on a new IBM system z900 running Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise.

A national leader in mainframe instruction, the university (and its Walton School of Business) has taught Linux on the mainframe for five years and was rewarded for its efforts with a free five-year loan, including maintenance, of the System z machine from the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer manufacturer. The university ran pilot programs on the mainframe through the end of the last academic year and will use it for courses starting this week.

The university’s fully configured system has 16 processors, 64 GB of memory and 7 TB of disk space. It contains enterprise-size databases donated by Sam’s Club, Tyson’s wholesale outlets and Dillard’s retail stores, with the latter’s repository containing 140 million rows. These unusually large databases, which are no longer used by the companies themselves, give students a rich, real-world experience as they learn how to work with relational databases and run SAP’s business intelligence application.

and relevant for readers of this blog…

The first to develop university-level Linux on the mainframe courses five years ago, Douglas decided to focus on Linux after concluding that it was a major computing platform and would continue to grow. And SUSE, which the university had been running on the previous IBM system 390 mainframe, was selected for the z900 because “it seemed to be the operating system of choice,” especially for large users such as insurance companies and financial institutions, Douglas said.

To learn more about why SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell holds 80-90+% marketshare on mainframes, visit this page.

To see why SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell and SAP are a excellent match, and why SAP recommends SLES for SAP on Linux deployments, visit this page.

Press Release:

WALTHAM, Mass.— 05 Aug 2008— Enabling customers to run their time-critical business applications faster, and with more reliability and predictability, Novell today announced SUSE® Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is now certified on select IBM BladeCenter hardware and supported by IBM WebSphere Real Time middleware. Utilizing best-of-breed products, Novell’s real-time operating system and IBM’s real-time Java hardware together ensure enterprises running latency-sensitive applications have the highest possible performance and availability across their entire solution stack.

“IBM and Novell are leveraging their strengths to deliver complete Linux-based solutions for customers looking for ways to reduce latency and increase the availability of their time-sensitive applications by running them on a certified and supported open source-based solution stack,” said Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM. “Real-time Linux enables customers to prioritize processes and allows for a predictable period of completion on many time-sensitive projects, including critical tasks such as derivatives trading.”

Companies are increasingly standardizing on Java for its portability and time to market advantages. Until recently, however, enterprises running time-critical Java applications could not guarantee they would meet necessary time constraints and quality of service metrics. Combining IBM BladeCenter hardware and IBM WebSphere Real Time with SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 from Novell® ensures time-sensitive Java workloads will deliver predictable performance, each and every time. This means mission critical enterprises, such as financial services organizations, are able to meet their external and internal customer commitments.

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time from Novell is fully supported with WebSphere Real Time and certified on select IBM BladeCenter hardware,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “Enterprises that require their Java applications to meet strict deadlines now have access to an integrated, tested and optimized development and run-time environment for time-critical Java workloads.”

Pricing and Availability

SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is available for a suggested $2,500 annual subscription. More information on pricing and availability can be found at www.novell.com/realtime.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 inherits the strengths of the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform. The next-generation platform for the open enterprise, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the best-engineered and most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing, from the desktop to the data center. SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time is fully integrated with ZENworks® Orchestrator, Novell’s solution for scalable management of heterogeneous resources. Together, the two products extend low-latency benefits beyond applications and into the data center. For more information on SUSE Linux Enterprise offerings from Novell, visit www.novell.com/linux.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell, SUSE and ZENworks are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Press Contact

Charlotte Betterley
Novell, Inc.
Telephone: +1 781 464-8253
Email: cbetterley@novell.com

From the article:

IBM’s Corp.’s Cognos segment has chosen Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise to debut its Cognos 8 business intelligence software on the mainframe.

Cognos, which IBM bought for $4.9 billion last November, bypassed three IBM operating systems (z/OS, z/VM and z/VSE) and instead chose IBM System z for Linux and Novell’s SUSE for its entrée into the mainframe market. An IBM mainframe version for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is also in the works.

“System z represents 20% to 30% of software applications on the mainframe, and its lead is growing,” said Jennifer Hanniman, a senior product marketing manager for Cognos 8. “And 20% of the growth in demand for System z is for Linux [rather than IBM's other mainframe operating systems].”

Read More.