Novell News

There's a contest underway to see who can build the coolest appliances using SUSE Studio.

There are 3 easy steps to participate in The Disters, a SUSE Studio contest:

1. Build your appliance using SUSE Studio.
2. Publish your appliance to SUSE Gallery and obtain your URL.
3. Enter your appliance into the contest

You can enter it as a Community Appliance (for stuff you're willing to share freely) or a Commercial Appliance (for stuff you plan to market).

The Disters award contest runs July 27 – September 30, 2010

Get all the details here.

• SUSE Appliance

Fame and a modest fortune await! We're looking for inventive minds to build the most innovative software appliances. Publish your unique appliance to the new SUSE® Gallery™ and enter into a contest to win $10,000!

Just like building an appliance with SUSE Studio, entering the competition is easy and free. To get started, visit The Disters homepage.

SUSE Studio is the best way to build Linux-based software appliances. We have over 80,000 users to-date who've collectively built over 400,000 appliances. The competition closes at the end of September – enter and vote today!

Lori MacVittie, blogger for F5 Networks, has written extensively about hybrid clouds.  In recent posts such as “The Three Reasons Hybrid Clouds Will Dominate” and “The Other Hybrid Cloud Architecture”, she discusses the risks and benefits from an infrastructure perspective. Clearly there are many unanswered questions about hybrid clouds before they can be considered a mainstream enterprise solution.  You can hear Lori and Novell’s Ross Chevalier, explore hybrid clouds in the enterprise on today's cloudchasers at 4:00PM ET.

You can also catch up on old cloudchasers shows on our blog or iTunes.

Over the last week there's been a lot of media attention paid to the City of Los Angeles and their ongoing struggle to migrate to a cloud-based application and email infrastructure. Novell has appeared in much of this coverage as we've been a longtime supplier and partner to the City, providing a range of solutions including collaboration and email capabilities.

About a year ago, the City of Los Angeles decided to migrate all its staff to a new, cloud-based application and collaboration system provided by Google. As the incumbent supplier for collaboration tools, Novell agreed to provide ongoing support to the City to make sure the transition was smooth and that important services weren't disrupted. Delays in implementing the system, largely because of security concerns, mean that Novell is still providing services and support, notably to the City of Los Angeles Police Department. We'll continue to offer support to our customer at the City for as long as it takes, so together we can ensure ongoing, day-to-day operations for all City employees.

Novell is sympathetic to the security and other challenges the City of LA faces. We have an industry-leading security and identity management business that exists to solve just these kinds of challenges, and have over 56,000 customers around the world. Cloud computing offers the promise of lower costs and greater flexibility, but creates new challenges around access control, governance and data security. In survey after survey, security is the leading concern amongst IT executives exploring cloud adoption, which is why leading cloud providers such as Verizon Business have teamed with Novell to offer identity and security services in their cloud offerings.

To support organizations seeking to leverage the opportunities in cloud computing around Collaboration, Novell delivers a compendium of solutions that fit the specific needs of the customer, minimizing painful transitions. These solutions include Novell GroupWise, Novell Teaming, Novell Conferencing and soon-to-be-released Novell Pulse that provides innovative, real-time collaboration services protected by industry leading security and compliance.

You may have seen a recent article about Linux adoption and market share, claiming SUSE is losing ground to Canonical/Ubuntu. This is nonsense.

The most reliable data source for Linux market share information is IDC, which shows that far from losing share, SUSE is gaining market share across physical, virtual and cloud deployments. Based on IDC's Linux Server Tracker as of April 2010, Ubuntu has less than a 5% unit share of the Linux market, a number that has remained largely unchanged over the last few years. Novell has over 25% market share. The survey highlighted in the TechTarget article asked if a particular OS is being used, not the extent of the use. In other words, a single instance of Ubuntu counted the same as 1,000 instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

The reality is that the Linux market is a two-horse race between Novell and Red Hat, companies that offer very different approaches to the market. There are reasons for Novell's significant share – for example, SUSE Linux Enterprise has over 5,000 certified applications from 1,400 ISVs, while Ubuntu highlights fewer than 30 ISVs on its website (notably absent are mainstays Oracle and SAP) – hardly critical mass.

Canonical has argued that it is leapfrogging established Linux vendors and focusing on the cloud. Nice story. Novell is a leader in cloud computing, thanks to our strong relationships with significant cloud players such as IBM, Fujitsu, Vodacom, Tencent and Verizon. And our landmark agreement with virtualization leader (and future cloud heavyweight) VMware has the potential to change the game.

There are other ways we're changing the game, too. SUSE Studio and our unique SUSE Appliance Program have attracted over 80,000 registered users as well as major-label ISVs like IBM, VMware and SAP. Software appliances make it fast and easy to create and deploy fully-tested, ready-to-run application stacks for both cloud and on-premise deployments. And Novell – unlike Ubuntu – can offer customers added-value capabilities from our broader portfolio such as security and identity management solutions (which, according to the very research cited in the article, is the leading concern of companies that haven't yet considered cloud computing).

While provocative headlines and ambiguous surveys may get attention, the facts tell a different story.

The openSUSE Project today announced the appointment of Jos Poortvliet as openSUSE Community Manager starting August 1. Poortvliet commented:

The opportunity to become part of the international openSUSE community is very exciting. There are a great number of interesting developments going on in the free software world, and openSUSE plays a major role in many of them. I look forward to working with the community to help future growth while finding new directions and ways of nurturing and delivering the openSUSE project's innovative technologies to users and developers around the world.

Guest Post from Markus Rex, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Open Platform Solutions.

For those of you who don’t know Dister, he is the mascot for SUSE Studio, a free, web-based appliance building tool that is a key technology component of our SUSE Appliance Program.

Today Dister is a year old and he has a great deal to be proud of. One year ago we announced the SUSE Appliance Program – the industry’s first solution for building and deploying fully-supported software appliances. This launch was very well received by ISVs and the marketplace with ZDnet’s Dana Blankhenhorn reporting, “It may be the most important thing Novell has done for software shops in decades.”

Since that launch, we’ve continued to deliver on the strategy we outlined one year ago. Our more than 80,000 registered SUSE Studio users (including 5,000 ISVs) have built more than 415,000 appliances that have been downloaded an astonishing 3 million times. We’ve expanded relationships with leading technology vendors, including IBM, Ingres and VMware and we have added more product innovations to enhance the program. For a one-year-old, Dister certainly has been busy.

Today we mark another milestone in the SUSE Appliance Program with the launch of SUSE Gallery, an online showcase for publishing software appliances and cloud-based applications and services. The concept behind SUSE Gallery is similar to that of the Apple App Store: developers post their appliances in a venue where end users can browse and download. However, unlike the App Store, all appliances published in SUSE Gallery are free for download and cloning. SUSE Gallery thus provides a friction-free forum for the exchange of ideas, innovation and best practices across all sectors of the software industry.

To jumpstart the Gallery, we’re also launching the first annual “Dister” awards! For appliances built in SUSE Studio and published in SUSE Gallery, we will be awarding $20,000 in prizes to the creators of the most inventive software appliances in two categories: “Community Use” and “Commercial Use”. The competition opens today and is free, so get building and remember to vote on your favorite submissions!

Why is Novell investing so heavily in software appliances? Software appliances are a key component of Novell’s strategy to lead in the intelligent workload management market. Software appliances – pre-configured combinations of an application, middleware and operating system integrated into a single image and tailored to run on industry-standard platforms—are changing the way software developers package and deliver software. Novell realized early on that the flexibility and lower cost of Linux made it the ideal platform for software appliances.

Today, I am happy to celebrate with Dister the successes of the SUSE Appliance Program and the launch of the new SUSE Gallery. I encourage you to check out our free, web-based appliance building tool SUSE Studio and either build your own appliance or vote for your favorite one today!

The next SHARE event is approaching quickly – it takes place in Boston from August 1-5 at Hynes Convention Center: http://www.share.org/Events/UpcomingConference/tab…

If you are attending, don´t miss the chance to meet our experts for System z, and visit us at Booth #319. To name just a few, watch out for Kim Lorusso (IBM Alliance Marketing Manager and Cool Blogger), Patrick Quairoli (Technical Alliance Manager), Marcus Kraft (Linux on mainframe "pioneer" and Product Manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z), David Getzin (Partner Executive for IBM), John Jolly (Sys z Architect), and others. Chat with them about the SUSE Linux Enterprise Consolidation Suite tailored for IBM Solution Edition for Enterprise Linux. Don´t know what that is? Read more here: http://www.novell.com/products/systemz/els.html
And get the latest about the new zEnterprise System – you bet that will be one of the "ruling" topics.

Or listen to Mike Friesenegger, one of our most experienced Technical Specialists, when he talks about "ASP.NET on zLinux: A New Workload" (Tues Aug 3, 9:30-10:30AM, Room 305) and about how to " Implement the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension on System z" (Tues Aug 3, 11AM-12PM, Room 208). And you´ll have the opportunity to hear from customers like Nationwide Insurance why and how they use SLES for System z.

And as a side note – for those who have travel constraints and cannot attend personally, SHARE offers the option to participate online – just check out http://www.share.org/Events/UpcomingConference/SHA…

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z

Novell platinum partner Data Technique is a successful and dynamic IT consulting services firm. Terry Calloway, owner and president, has led the company to several industry awards including selection as a CRN Fastgrowth 100 Company in three consecutive years, membership in the Inc. 5000, and Novell Central Division Partner of the Year Award.

In this PartnerPod, Dan Dufault, director of partner marketing for Novell, interviews Terry Calloway about ConneXcloud, Data Technique’s solution that connects cloud-based applications such as Google's applications suite with existing infrastructures. These connections enable an organization to administer cloud-based application environments seamlessly across all platforms. An identity-based solution built upon Novell Identity Manager, ConneXcloud provides a single point of management for user accounts sharing information across disparate applications.

Novell PartnerPods are periodic podcast interviews demonstrating how Novell PartnerNet members can grow their business and increase profitability using the Novell's portfolio of products and solutions. For more information about Novell’s partner program go to: http://www.novell.com/partners/

Listen to the podcast here:

Today, Novell announced that its Data Synchronizer product is now shipping with a GroupWise connector. Specifically this means that Novell GroupWise now syncs to Microsoft SharePoint and other third-party applications including Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

With server-side synchronization,  Novell Data Synchronizer users can avoid switching between applications manually to keep their data up-to-date in various apps and on multiple devices. Users modify data once and then have access to it anywhere, anytime.  For example, on the sales and marketing front, managers have data at their fingertips from apps and devices tied into an organization’s CRM or other sales management systems. Even the smallest modification, syncs with all systems and  no one misses a beat. At the end of the day this saves users time and reduces IT frustration by providing a central location through which to manage all of an organization’s data.

A few of the key features of Novell Data Synchronizer with GroupWise connector are:

1. Server-side synchronization: As users update information in apps and on mobile devices, the engine stores those changes in real time to allow other connected apps and devices to automatically access that data.
2. Application integration: Integration between enterprise and third-party apps eliminates the need to manually add the same information into multiple systems. Enter data once and multiple apps, devices and users have instant access from anywhere.
3. Many-to-many integration: Synchronization with Novell Data Synchronizer can be achieved from multiple applications to multiple targets.
4. Mobility integration: As users work from their mobile devices, data synchronizes back to their connected applications. Novell GroupWise email, calendars and contacts sync with a variety of mobile devices and operating systems including iPhone, Android, Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile.
5. Extensible and highly configurable: Through Novell Data Synchronizer SDK and open API, administrators can customize existing connectors to fit their environments’ unique needs. These can be used internally in an organization or even provided as third party solutions.

Novell GroupWise users can get Novell Data Synchronizer access immediately with GroupWise connector availability starting today.  Stay tuned for integration with Novell Teaming later this fall.  Be sure to check out www.novell.com/products/data-synchronizer/  and happy synching!

Get Connected: Novell Data Synchronizer Hooks in to Third Party Apps

Today, Novell announced that its Data Synchronizer product is now shipping with a GroupWise connector. Specifically this means that Novell GroupWise now syncs to Microsoft SharePoint and other third-party applications including Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

With server-side synchronization,  Novell Data Synchronizer users can avoid switching between applications manually to keep their data up-to-date in various apps and on multiple devices. Users modify data once and then have access to it anywhere, anytime.  For example, on the sales and marketing front, managers have data at their fingertips from apps and devices tied into an organization’s CRM or other sales management systems. Even the smallest modification, syncs with all systems and  no one misses a beat. At the end of the day this saves users time and reduces IT frustration by providing a central location through which to manage all of an organization’s data.

A few of the key features of Novell Data Synchronizer with GroupWise connector are:

1. Server-side synchronization: As users update information in apps and on mobile devices, the engine stores those changes in real time to allow other connected apps and devices to automatically access that data.

2. Application integration: Integration between enterprise and third-party apps eliminates the need to manually add the same information into multiple systems. Enter data once and multiple apps, devices and users have instant access from anywhere.

3. Many-to-many integration: Synchronization with Novell Data Synchronizer can be achieved from multiple applications to multiple targets.

4. Mobility integration: As users work from their mobile devices, data synchronizes back to their connected applications. Novell GroupWise email, calendars and contacts sync with a variety of mobile devices and operating systems including iPhone, Android, Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile.

5. Extensible and highly configurable: Through Novell Data Synchronizer SDK and open API, administrators can customize existing connectors to fit their environments’ unique needs. These can be used internally in an organization or even provided as third party solutions.

Novell GroupWise users can get Novell Data Synchronizer access immediately with GroupWise connector availability starting today.  Stay tuned for integration with Novell Teaming later this fall.  Be sure to check out www.novell.com/products/data-synchronizer/ and happy synching!

For months now, rumors have been flying about the next generation of the IBM System z—when it would be launched, what it would include, and even bold queries as to whether or not the system would have Windows functionality. In addition to the features/functionality, I started to wonder—and focus—on the name IBM would give this new system. Is it that obvious that I really am a marketer at heart?

Product naming and product branding are no easy task, despite what some folks out there might think! How would IBM capture the right name for this rumored groundbreaking technology?  zNext, z11 were the terms many in the industry were using to describe the “system of systems”.  Prior to launch, some articles did indeed refer to the final name at launch, zEnterprise.

With lack of an official name from IBM, as I prepped for launch I personally started to refer to it as the  “system-who-must-not-be-named”.  Harry Potter fans can hopefully appreciate my reference.  For those of you not familiar with Harry Potter, there is a character in the series called Lord Voldemort who is so powerful and well-known that no one refers to him by name; rather he is referred to as "he-who-must-not-be-named.”
Given all the hype and confidentiality behind this next generation of System z architecture, I thought I was pretty funny referring to the launch as the “system-who-must-not-be-named.” You might think I'm cheesy for making this analogy to the zEnterprise System and Harry Potter, but bear with me.

Like Lord Voldemort, the zEnterprise is very powerful. In fact, it’s the fastest server in the world, according to IBM and Tom Rosamilia. However, unlike Lord Voldemort the zEnterprise is not an evil system. It promises to integrate harmoniously heterogeneous computing environments. The zEnterprise mainframe server allows workloads to run in a hybrid environment with mainframe, POWER7 and System x servers in a shared resource environment and be managed as a single virtualized system.

Tom Rosamilia's (General Manager, IBM Power and z Systems) quote sums it up for me at a high level: "The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a bold move to fundamentally change how data centers are managed. The new mainframe is the fastest enterprise server in the world and represents a giant leap forward in performance.  This new dimension in enterprise computing– extending mainframe governance to POWER7 and System x blades integrated into the zEnterprise System architecture–was developed over the past three years with direct involvement from a team of IBM's 30 top customers, which provided direct input at every stage of the development process”
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/321…

I have to say, I think IBM got the product naming right. I do think that they surprised many people by not calling the new system “z11” . zEnterprise describes the key functionality that a game changing “system of systems” brings to the market and to enterprises worldwide.

The fact this system also supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z isn't half bad either! My guess is for those of you who have been following the hardware space, you would know if I simply said, the system “Who-Must-Not-be-Named” arrives you would think zEnterprise. IBM would like us to think of the zEnterprise as a “systems of systems.” You can find more info on that definition here: http://bit.ly/df11KY

What do you think? Did IBM get the product naming right for this launch? Is the zEnterprise indeed the system of all systems?

Welcome your feedback!

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z

A lot of rumors have been circulating for the past few weeks about the expected "zNext" hardware system from IBM. Articles, blogs and tweets have all be predicting and guessing about what the new “ zNext” system might include. Today, finally, IBM officially unveiled the secret during a series of press events and public webcast. The zEnterprise System is now available!

And WOW what a hit! The announcement trumped all the guesswork that was going on. We will get a much more capable, powerful and high-performing new z hardware system that delivers greatly enhanced consolidation capabilities. The new z196 includes:

• Up to 80 user-configurable cores
• A quad-core 5.2 GHz processor chip which is designed to help improve
  the execution of Java™ and CPU-intensive workloads
• Up to 3 TB of real memory per server
• Increased internal networks (HiperSockets™)
• The ability to extend the amount of addressable storage capacity
• A massively improved power efficiency (Stealing IBM's marketing words – this new z196 system really allows to "do more with less".)

But it gets even better – IBM will bring us "the one system that rules them all" in the most positive sense. In this case, the rumors were right. Rumor had it that the new hardware would include an announcement of a "hybrid system". Were you surprised? What IBM unveiled today might revolutionize the data center.

With the introduction of the new IBM zEnterprise™ System, for the first time it will be possible to deploy an integrated hardware platform that brings together System z and distributed technologies.

This hybrid system is designed to reduce complexity, improve security and bring applications closer to the data they need. It will consist of three components:

• The first component is the new z196 mainframe system which will be available soon.
• Over time the second component will be added, which is the z Blade
  Center Extension (zBX) with Power modules, and later, the x86
  modules.
• And the third component, the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager, is key for the "hybridism" of the system and keeps the parts together. It is a new platform management capability which monitors, and governs workloads that are deployed across zEnterprise assets, including Linux virtual machines running on z/VM. Via the Unified Resource Manager, the multi-operating system resources running on different architectures are supposed to function as a single, logical, virtualized system, with shared memory, shared disk, etc … IBM promises this provides operational convenience when customers want to relocate applications from the zBX to Linux on z/VM as a result of application growth, closer consolidation requirements and/or a need for superior qualities of service.

Doesn´t that sound fabulous? Much more power and performance – with a massively reduced TCO! And to make things even better, the new zEnterprise is supported by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z. If you want to learn more we'd love to discuss it with you. Let us know what you think by posting comments below, or just drop me an email. chabow@novell.com

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Cool Solutions

Our industry loves buzzwords.  We have seen this happen since the dawn of IT, with new phraseology coming and old ones being retired.

I hear about VDI a lot.  Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.  Sounds interesting.  Unfortunately the number of "definitions" are so varied that every day the term means less and less.

Some years back I took the Question Based Selling program.  Many of you who read this probably did as well.  So when I hear a prospect or customer talk about doing, wanting to do, thinking about, VDI, I use the response from that training "how do you mean?"

Unsurprisingly, the answers are varied.  Often they will resemble at a high level the slanted proposal from a vendor.  By asking questions, I find that most times, the whole concept is not well thought out.  VDI, in most flavours, has a significant impact on network infrastructure, bandwidth, perimeter devices, skills and usability.  VDI is often associated with a specific technology.  Examples include running a virtual machine containing a full OS and applications, or we see it presented as a new way of describing thin client, or sometimes some middle ground with a rich OS on the client but some things streamed and some things virtualized at the application level.

Invariably, a consultative approach will reveal that no one of these models serves even 80% of the business needs, and in most cases, what the customer-prospect actually needs is all of them and more.  The perception in that marketplace today is that the customer-prospect has to settle.  This is wrong.  They don't have to settle for a solution that doesn't provide the scope and agility needed by the business.

Many of the VDI "solutions" aren't actually solutions at all.  They start with a shipping product, what the market refers to as COTS (common off the shelf) software and then wrap it in a lot of custom code that requires a lot of specialized services.  Interesting, but as noted in a recent Harvard Business Review article shared with me by Patrick Hynes, that doesn't change the world, it perpetuates an aging model.

REDI is our answer to the customer question, "how do I best deliver desktops as a service to my business, based upon the needs of the user, group or role, leveraging bandwidth, equipment, load, capacity and efficiency in a complete manner?"  Hence not a bunch of point products that only address one vector, or a compendium of non-integrated point products.  The key that I hear from customer execs is that it's not about OS virtualization or app virtualization or streaming, it's about a standardized management framework that facilitates all of these deliverables.  And the binding of that to Identity is not an optional step, it's integral in what the consumer of the service receives.  If we concur that IT is a Service Provider to the Business, then the Service Provider must place significant focus on delivering what the business needs, not just the technology therein.  So this includes the management framework, the security, the identity, the redundancy, flexible delivery models tuned to the workload, and of course must provide the recipient of the service the ability to see at a glance what the deliverable quality looks like.

We all have service delivery expectations.  Think about your own expectations for your personal mobile, or high speed internet, or online banking.  There is a service level agreement in there explicitly or tacitly understood and when we as customers can see validation that we are getting what we expect, we are happier.  The same thing applies to the business obtaining services.

I have to give a ton of credit to Steve Ewald, Valentin Mihai, Jerry Combs and the other team members who have taken standard Novell offerings and built them into a comprehensive answer to the problem of managing a complex deliverable that doesn't force the end customer into some constrained box.  I thank them for the education they've provided to me, and as I've been talking about the model with customers via presentation, telephone and whiteboard, I have to say that it works.  I was at a prospect just a week ago where the senior executive in the room said to the CE and I that while he has heard VDI so much it means everything and nothing to him, our conversation was the first time he heard any vendor show up with a complete story and scalable solution that was sufficiently modular and that could fit the evolving requirements his team was working on.

We've all seen it happen in technology.  Brilliant ideas that are too early for the marketplace.  A solution that is so exciting, it turns into a mess as everybody wants to play "me too" with many players engaging too late in the game.   In my opinion, we are in the right place at the right time with a solution that actually works and woe upon us if we don't get out there and take the lead in this incredible market opportunity.  Amazing technology, put together to solve business problems, using existing and proven components that leverages the existing customer investment.  That's REDI.  That's what makes our offering special and why we can lead this space.  VDI is the ship that never left the dock, REDI is the ship that traverses the world.

Until next time, peace.

Ross

Operate, Control & Deliver Services through Technology is the Job of IT Operations

Cloud and Virtualization brings Agility – At What Hidden Cost and What Value?

When the Novell Business Service Management product team was on the cusp of releasing an integration to Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing service (EC2) this month the very first thing that came to my mind as a one time (century's ago in the dark ages of mainframes, assembler, CICS and COBOL) application developer was, "if dialing up a VM is free in the cloud, what is to stop me from calling it continually, on a whim and just leave it running?". If I don't see the cost, how would you expect the costs to be managed conscienciously and with frugality? Why would that occur to me? Coming from the dark ages, I worked for a large outsourcer where size of the code, how fast it ran, how many requests for the same data was scrutinized (read once, use often), etc.

Reminds me of having a mobile phone, sent to Europe to travel and told, just use the phone. Then I found the roaming charges as I investigated my own usage one month in an attempt to estimate what I might require on a personal plan. WOW! The hidden roaming cost would have changed my behavior had I known ahead of time.

Read on for quick run down of these hidden costs brought on by new technology………..

Three hidden costs jump out at me without batting an eye as an ex-support person/operator/marketeer (yes, jack of a lot of trades – master of none) are focused with the three functions of Operations: 1) Usage – the yin and yang of agility and control 2) Support – the operation side of services regardless of whether the business contracted for it out of frustration or whether Ops supplied the services and 3) Quality – managing to a SLA and the delivery of services.

Control and Usage:

This is the first one that jumped out at me, if it appears free, how much will those pesky application developers rack up in fees? Solution, meter it and metering it is actually quite simple and then charge it back. Novell Business Service Management could meter the usage and present it in a dashboard real time and could shut down usage when it hits a threshold of appropriate usage and send out notifications. Talk about a behavior changer. Reminds me of my early days when I had to count the number of times I compiled my code causing me to be aware of the machine time I consumed on compiles.

Operate and Support:

As soon as a service is contracted, it requires help and support of some kind and you know your service desk will end up fielding those calls. The business gets frustrated and goes outside and leverages EC2 (for instance) to provide additional capacity in search of agility over IT, but forgets that each time they contact the service desk that is $25 for the initial contact and goes up from there. Just think of the number of how to calls, what if they had to then pay for those too and you as IT charged a premium for those since they are not your services? Imagine this can be tracked and displayed in a real-time dashboard with Novell Business Service Manager.

The positive on this frustration and going outside to gain additional capacity will be that the service provider will impose a standard of service and configuration upon your business units. When they are ready to come back home, the standard will be easier to deploy and enforce.

Delivery and Quality of Service:

Finally, the last thing that the business may have thought about might be the service levels and the quality of service required in conjunction with their desire for agile, on-demand capacity. What does it cost for an application developer to sit idle? What does it cost when that developer is off-shore and on contract and they are waiting on that capacity? This is a real life cost of a current Novell Business Service Management customer (not in the cloud – yet – but in managing the costs and effectiveness of their developers).

The ability to monitor performance of the service, availability and efficiency of the subscribers in a real-time dashboard, even if your business user contracted for the service and elastic service directly, time to be the hero and illustrate the cost / value and redeem yourself to regain the service.

Like I opened with, I've written this blog in under an hour and were the first thoughts (and expose the depth of my management roots) when opening up the world of Amazon and EC2 to Novell Business Service Management customers. Ok, while the unlimited usage hit me straight away, I admit also to expanding upon my manager's IWM blog post recently reminding me of this topic (http://bit.ly/dk46al).

Two great articles supporting the boiling tea kettle of frustration of business with IT appeared just this past week:

NetworkWorld 7/16/2010 – Cloud Computing: Two Kinds of Agility (http://bit.ly/c3ExXM)

BusinessWire 7/15/2010 – IT Executives Must Embrace Innovation or Expect Weakened Leadership Opportunities (http://bit.ly/byZM1q)

Why these articles? Business is going direct out of frustration and both point to how IT could incorporate Virtualizaiton and Cloud Computing (new technology) into their offeings as innovation and new and improved services rather than just IT efficiencies. Business going direct has 3 easily identifiable costs as outlined above.

Business Align or Perish or at least be Outsourced! What will that cost your business?

Physical, Virtual, Cloud Computing – The Control Never Ends! Check out Novell Business Service Management! (http://bit.ly/aOVQrS)

• Cool Solutions

By Rich Wiltbank

The other day, I was talking to my colleague, Richard Whitehead, about how partners should integrate the cloud delivery model into their current offerings. He threw out a simplified analogy of a local bank, which I paraphrase here:

Several years ago, the key to a bank’s profitability with its customers was a checking/savings account. The bank went out of its way to establish and maintain accounts with local customers and businesses. This account is similar to the physical infrastructure and personal relationship solution providers have with their customers.

Then, the banks started offering overdraft protection on those accounts. This was a way for the customer to have a line of credit just when they needed it – and it was a profitable business offering for the bank. This is analogous to the flexibility provided by a virtualized infrastructure that a solution provider may provide its customers.

Subsequently, the banks started offering their customers additional credit by providing credit cards. The bank didn’t create its own credit card brand, but used existing infrastructure, processes, and branding established by large credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, etc) and became a sales and billing arm for those large companies. This is similar to what is currently available in the cloud computing model for solution providers.

You should note that the banks never stopped pushing to acquire and maintain accounts, because that is where they have great value. However, they make their most profitable money by leveraging their account relationship with their customers and providing additional products and services to those customers. These additional products and services are very profitable, simply because they don’t have to pay for the infrastructure or maintenance of those products themselves – it is done by another company.

To push the analogy a bit, in the banking industry, there are very few credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Diners Club) and no new ones have sprung up for years. Conversely, hundreds of new banks, each founded on a base of local accounts and value-added services, are started each year in the US (according to the FDIC).

I believe that today’s solution provider market is similar. There is limited opportunity to start a cloud provider business – this will dominated by a few, large companies.  There are, however, tremendous opportunities for solution providers to help existing and new customers integrate new cloud-based products and services into their existing IT infrastructure.

How do you help your customers integrate cloud services into their existing infrastructure?

guest post: Leo Castro, Solution Marketing Manager, Novell Identity and Security

Governance, Risk, and Compliance solutions are increasingly on the minds of CIOs as they think about the necessary capabilities that they will need in coming years.  SAP and Novell have quickly become a leader in the field, which is why Novell deepened its partnership with SAP over a year ago.  The complimentary capabilities of Novell and SAP made it an obvious partnership, as detailed by Sebastian Rohr of Kuppinger Cole.   Novell's industry-leading expertise in identity and security management provided the needed view into the IT infrastructure that added value to SAP's GRC solutions.

While others are just partnerships on paper, Novell and SAP have demonstrated accomplishments along product development, marketing, and sales dimensions.  These accomplishments have not been achieved overnight. They have been the result of collaborative efforts between SAP, Novell, and SI partners like Deloitte and KPMG to deliver the best GRC solutions on the market.  This has resulted in successful solution deployments for customers worldwide, including:

A chemical manufacturer using a legacy identity management system needed to automate provisioning across disparate systems. The company was in the early stages of developing its GRC program, so the expandability of Novell and SAP’s integrated solution played a key role in the selection process. Because this chemical manufacturer also had several mission-critical SAP systems, this solution’s out-of-the-box integration was a key differentiator.
A utility company needed an identity management and security system that would not only leverage their existing SAP BusinessObjects GRC investments, but also provide a roadmap to future integrations with other SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions. Novell and SAP’s integrated solution was the answer for them.

So why are identity and security management such key complements to GRC?  Identity and security management form the backbone of understanding what is actually occurring in the enterprise.  For its part, GRC management software uses that identity- and security-related information to provide business context—giving executives confidence that network events are not putting business objectives at risk.  These management technologies are a strategic investment, so it is important to purchase a solution from vendors whose integrated technologies deliver proven results.

The Novell Compliance Management Platform and the Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP environments are the first major products to be certified with SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions.  Beyond this certified SAP integration, the Novell Compliance Management Platform is also the only identity and security platform on the market that has all three of its components in the leader's quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrants for User Provisioning, Web Access Management, and SIEM.  Only Novell can make that claim.  Not CA. Not IBM. Not Oracle.

Specific to its integration with SAP, Novell was recognized for its excellence in product innovation at the recent SAP SAPPHIRE conference in May by ERP Executive  The award was won by the Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP environments and recognizes “a unique solution or technology that will dramatically impact or change the current market.”

But having a great product is only half the battle.  You also need vendors that collaborate beyond product development and engineering in order to solve your specific problems.  Because the long-standing Novell and SAP partnership also spans marketing and sales dimensions, our teams have worked together on joint sales calls to solve customer issues in real-world environments.  The joint solutions we deliver today—and will continue to deliver—are more than just vaporware. Together, Novell and SAP  deliver unsurpassed product integration and creative solutions that adapt to each customer's unique needs.

guest post: Chase Jones, Solution Marketing Manager, Novell

Gartner, Inc. recently released its 2010 edition of the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) magic quadrant. This year, Gartner placed Novell Sentinel—our SIEM technology—in the leader’s quadrant.

This is a significant accomplishment for two reasons: First, it reaffirms Novell’s commitment to the identity and security management space in general, and to the security management space, in particular. Second, it’s another proof point that Novell truly delivers a suite of industry-leading identity and security technologies.

Novell’s been in the identity game for over decade.  Since then, we’ve continued to innovate and lead the identity and security market with a host of technologies—like Novell Identity Manager, Novell Sentinel and Novell Access Manager—that were not only built to work seamlessly together out of the box, but are also considered leaders in their respective market categories.

Novell Sentinel, for example, is part of our Novell Compliance Management Platform—the ONLY product on the market to integrate identity management, access management and security management together out of the box. You read that right. Of the major players in the market, Novell is the ONLY one that offers this level of integration between its products. In fact, Novell is also the ONLY player in the market whose identity management, access management and security management technologies are rated as “leaders” in Gartner’s user provisioning, Web access management and SIEM magic quadrants, respectively. Oracle can’t make that claim. Neither can IBM, nor CA.

What does that mean for our customers? No matter which product they choose, they can rest easy knowing that their Novell investments have been proven, time and again, in real-world deployments; that identity and security management isn’t just a side business for us—it’s part of our DNA; and that we’ll continue building best-in-class, integrated products while other vendors play catch up.

If there was ever a doubt in your mind that Novell was serious about identity and security management, now’s a great time to revisit that thought. And if you want an unbiased opinion, call up your favorite analyst and ask them about our suite. Better yet, see examples of some of the thousands of global customers that are running Novell Identity Manager, Novell Access Manager or Novell Sentinel.

By Rich Wiltbank

Yes, you read that right – I think that Solution Providers today should NOT move to the Cloud. Moving to something connotes leaving something behind, going from one thing to another. I think this is exactly the wrong strategy to build a profitable, growing Solution Provider business.

To explain myself, let’s look at your customers: they are not MOVING to the Cloud, discarding their physical and virtual infrastructure that they have built up over many years. Instead, they are trying to pragmatically INTEGRATE Cloud-delivered resources and applications into their existing IT infrastructure. As you can see from the chart below (created by Novell using data from IDC and Gartner), cloud, virtual and physical infrastructure will all still be relevant in the coming years.

So, why should your Solution Provider business be any different? You should not be looking at replacing your existing practices around physical and virtual infrastructure. Instead, you should be integrating Cloud offerings into what you are already doing. And, you should be cashing in on the profitable business of helping your customers understand HOW they make all of their disparate IT pieces work together as one.

Your value lies in your ability to be close enough to your customers so you can see their pain, make knowledgeable recommendations on how to best use the range of available technologies (including Cloud Computing) to solve their pain, and form relationships with vendors that have tools or solutions that let you implement those recommendations profitably. This creates success that will really MOVE your business forward!

What issues have you experienced as you try to integrate cloud delivery models with existing infrastructure models?

Gartner Identifies Emergence of Enterprise Security Intelligence or
Maybe More Aptly Put, the Convergence of IT Silos into Services Aligned to Business!

Someone passed the latest Gartner research to me today, very timely I might add. Report Number G00201051, “Prepare for the Emergence of Enterprise Security Intelligence”. It was timely as I have been spending a great deal of time over the last 2 weeks meeting and discussing with my counterparts in Novell’s Security Management solution just this topic of “Intelligence”, real-time infrastructure and SIEM in the context of services to the business with regards to impact, prioritization and management of resources.

This could be my most blasphemous blog to date, debating an analyst report. Being and ex-META analyst, I’ll be brave as I know they enjoy a good “discussion” and it isn’t that I disagree with the research and the points, maybe we don’t require another “concept” to achieve the results covered in some part by the current concept of Business Service Management (BSM).

Read on especially if you are a Novell Sentinel Customer and/or Novell Business Service Management customer as I would LOVE to hear your comments on this value proposition in what you have available to you from Novell today. It’s also a good thing I’m meeting with Gartner next week too, timing never my forte.

My Novell Security counterparts and I have been discussing a couple of options of where we bring together SIEM data and infrastructure data, marrying it into the intelligent service models that are core to the BSM solution where all of these interesting “data” metrics converge to become “information” in context to the business. Furthermore, rules of priority are defined for the “service”, not just the technology. The rules and thresholds are propagated up the service model visually depicting “Service Performance” so as action can be taken appropriately.

This is all done in near real-time (customer configures refresh based upon relevance and scale), in memory – data is not moved from the source where it is managed, it is accessed as required. The “intelligent service model” now displays a “multi-dimensional” state, meaning that there are several metrics that define state. State is not just pure availability, it is “multi-dimensional” across availability, business throughput, performance, security events, etc.

Value Proposition

• Business context prioritization
• Holistic service impact aversion
• Infrastructure impact on security events and vice versa
• Resource efficiency – focus on cost
• Resource effectiveness – focus on growth

The beauty of the solution is that correlation occurs in the monitoring/feeding systems on both sides of the fence, filtered and events sent up to the “intelligent service model” accordingly to provide that holistic visibility. So much of what Gartner describes up front in their definition is in place (maybe enhanced a bit) and fed up into the overlay that turns the “technology silos into services” holistically answering the “so what”, “what’s the impact” question during event storms regardless of the silo.

Ok Novell, what’s your hang-up – you must be asking? Sounds like a no brainer, right?

So here are my questions for you given today’s silos:

• Is it only interesting as a holistic “Security Infrastructure” view? Meaning the marrying of security infrastructure to the SIEM data.
• Is it interesting to Operations as a holistic view of infrastructure and security events?
• Who owns and finds it interesting at a “Intelligent Service Model” view answering that I to the business from a mulit-dimensional metric point-of-view?
• Are Operations and Security siloed by a brick wall or half-sized cubical wall?

I believe as Gartner defines, the real value is the business context and the value the service overlay provides in creating the visual and the business context by which to manage “services”.

The definition of the Intelligent Workload Management market is – “enabling IT organizations to manage and optimize computing resources in a policy-driven, secure and compliant manner across physical, virtual and cloud environments to deliver business services for end customers.”

Isn’t this exactly what we are talking about? Having spent a fair number of years dealing with concepts like ITIL, ITSM and BSM, I’m not sure what we require is another “concept” acronym, especially where it has a strong focus rooted in one silo – “Enterprise Security Intelligence”. Isn’t it really holistic “Service” to the business and customers and not another silo barrier to crush through? Isn’t it value of Build – Manage – Secure – Measure holistically as aligned to business services that we are striving to achieve?

IT Tipping Point to Value Add Growth Fuel to the Business and Innovation!

What do you Security and Operations folks think? Chime in, I’d love to hear your comments, thoughts and debate!

I love the debate! Bring it on!

• Cool Blogs: Official Novell Bloggers

IT Operations often Maliced as a "Roadblock" – Time for Datacenter Redemption!

BSM is more of a "market" than a tool as is IWM, both with areas of focus that deliver the goal in the end. Both require the marrying of many IT metrics turning them into actionable information as well business aligning IT technology silo's as services. Infrastructures supporting the market of IWM bring in the added complexity of portability, dynamic configurations, policy driven, identity aware, mixed environments (many outsourced to Cloud service providers), the likes IT operations and datacenters have yet to experience. Daunting no doubt.

The question becomes, will your Operations Center be the "roadblock" or the "catalyst" for agility with control, business alignment and responsiveness to take action in real-time?

Read on….first of several blogs to address the IT operational topics of Operate, Control and Deliver services in the new paradigm of Intelligent Workload Management…………….

Business Service Management addresses the 3 core focus areas of IT Operations:

• Operate – Availability, Performance, Quality of Service – Customer Experience, Impact Aversion
• Control – Compliance, Standards, Config Mgmt – Change & Standard Compliance, Impact Assessment
• Deliver – Service Performance, Service Alignment – Business and Technology Performance Aligned

Fundamentally these are pillars to IT operations in meeting the demands of a policy driven, secure, mixed and dynamic infrastructure. IDC cites the high rate of change and complexity being brought to bear on IT operations as daunting to embrace with control with old management practices without losing the flexibility and benefits of the next generation infrastructure (research paper http://bit.ly/9cgtHD).

Business seeks outside providers when seeking "change" and when they view IT operations as the "obstacle" and the challenge with this short sided view is service levels are often overlooked putting the business in a high risk situation (covered in several of my previous blogs http://bit.ly/aUL1dx – Risky Business in the Clouds, SLAs Part 1 and 2). Outsourcing is never done for cost, always done for "change". As a 25+ year veteran in this space, it's time for management to go from a laggard and perceived obstacle to cutting edge "Value Add". Yes, it is possible!

The complexity that a dynamic environment brings to business alignment with control requires IT Operations to leverage automation in managing the availability and configurations (to be covered individually in separate future blogs). What is required is real-time insight to take action and avert business impacting events, change control and compliance and service delivery driving innovation versus after the fact baseball stats or "IT Hero Metrics". It takes a different approach to the same challenge in managing technology silo's to business services.

As noted in the IDC Research Paper , "The Perfect Storm" is brewing for IT Operations. EMA just published a Service Impact Radar and did a good job of segmenting the various vendors based upon 3 criteria ( http://bit.ly/aHQ3Yf ):

• Platforms – multi product solution, some build your own integration to the solution
• Monitoring – niche performance & monitoring vendors for small to mid-market and those without monitoring
• Overlay – those who bring the mixed environment together and offer good enough CMS, monitoring, etc.

So the choice in meeting today's requirements becomes:

• Are you invested in a single platform from a single vendor and do you wait for them to build the solution, fully integrated solution and vendor lock-in that gets you to IWM? or
• Do you leverage current investments and just enough gap filling capabilities from the overlays to bring you to the holistic service view in mixed, dynamic environments today leveraging current investments? or
• Do you just require some basic monitoring?

At the speed of change and the requirements to align services in complex, dynamic infrastructures and provide real-time responses can your IT Operations afford to wait for the platform vendors or do you seek the "glue" that can enable you today? Configurable, real-time and infrastructure agnostic solutions can enable your IT Operations to get there today and leap frog the competition, driving top line revenue and leveraging technology versus after the fact "scores".

EMA noted 3 overlay management technologies that can take your IT Operations from "obstacle" to "enabler". One that is a small, UK, privately funded organization, one that is deeply rooted in performance and predictive analytics and one with Novell that was cited as the pioneer in this market with CMS, automation, federation of metrics and real-time capabilities with the best integration (at the source federation, not data duplication).

Intelligent Workload Management and new infrastructures can be daunting to manage, but they do not have to be. I will expand upon each of the the above 3 operational pillars in separate blogs, however, configurable, real-time technology control and business alignment is available today! Stay Tuned…..more to come…..

Operations "Heros" in the Perfect Storm of Intelligent Workload Management!

Novell BSM http://bit.ly/drHFHH

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