Novell Showcases Latest Solutions for the Open Enterprise at BrainShare 2007

Novell's BrainShare conference kicked off today in Salt Lake City, with keynotes, business and technical sessions, and demonstrations designed to share with Novell® customers, industry analysts and media the most advanced enterprise Linux* and management solutions on the market today. Bringing together technologists, customers and partners, BrainShare, with some 5,000 participants from more than 75 countries, has become one of the industry's best conferences for understanding the key developments in commercial open source software.

Novell made a series of announcements today around its enterprise-wide Linux and management offerings, including, among others, updates to its Linux distribution, including a thin-client product, a new Linux management solution, the open beta of Novell Open Enterprise Server 2, upgrades to its leading security and identity management solutions, and new teaming and collaboration tools. With some 60 technical and business partners joining Novell for the event, BrainShare is a unique opportunity to learn about all the latest solutions available around Novell technologies.

"Last year at BrainShare, we previewed SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, our platform for the open enterprise, which has now seen strong adoption in the market," said Novell President and CEO Ron Hovsepian. "This year, we've got a whole series of new solutions around Linux and management that help customers leverage the power of enterprise-strength open source and provide them the tools to manage mixed-source environments. These solutions reduce cost, complexity and risk, giving customers more time to focus on what they really want to – innovation and growth."

Desktop-to-Data Center Solutions

Today's BrainShare news illustrates strong momentum in Novell's two areas of strategic focus: enterprise-wide platforms based on Linux and open source, and security and systems management for mixed source environments (see separate releases for additional detail). On the Linux front, Novell is enhancing its desktop-to-data center offerings with the release of the public beta of SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 1 and the introduction of the new SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client. Service Pack 1 delivers significant enhancements in SUSE Linux Enterprise in virtualization, high-performance computing, security, interoperability and system management. SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client is a channel-enabled solution consisting of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and an image-creation tool kit that channel partners can use to provide a finished thin-client solution to customers.

Also supporting its desktop-to-data center strategy, Novell launched today at BrainShare the open beta of Open Enterprise Server 2, which provides trusted Novell workgroup services completely on SUSE Linux Enterprise, while helping long-time customers maintain their NetWare® investment through virtualization of NetWare on Linux. In addition, Novell unveiled Novell Teaming and Novell Teaming + Conferencing, two new team workspace and real-time collaboration solutions that complement Novell GroupWise® and the Novell Open Workgroup Suite, simplifying the everyday business activities people engage in to create, share, discuss and manage information.

Securing and Managing Mixed Environments

Novell also delivered new solutions today to support its strategy focus on security and systems management for mixed environments. Identity Manager 3.5 features tighter integration with authentication, single sign-on and event management solutions, and offers improved functionality to ease the complexity and lower the cost of deploying an enterprise-wide user provisioning and password management system. Sentinel™ 6.0 offers new capabilities for automating real-time monitoring of the enterprise security environment, identifying and remediating security incidents, and documenting regulatory compliance. On the systems management front, Novell ZENworks® 7.2 Linux Management gives customers a powerful new option to manage enterprise Linux, with support for both SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 and Red Hat* Enterprise Linux, as well as policy-based full lifecycle management to help customers deploy, manage and maintain their Linux resources.

Finally, Novell announced its participation in the OpenCourseWare Consortium, a group of more than 100 leading educational institutions around the world promoting the sharing of educational materials worldwide. Also on the training front, Novell is launching the Novell Certified Linux Desktop Administrator program at BrainShare this year.

Hovsepian kicked off BrainShare today with a keynote laying out Novell's strategic and technology directions around enterprise-wide Linux and management. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief researcher and strategy officer, also joined Novell chief technology officer Jeff Jaffe on stage today to highlight the customer benefits deriving from Novell's and Microsoft's work around Linux and Windows interoperability. Senior Novell executives will be keynoting throughout the week with details on Novell's product roadmaps and new technologies. BrainShare offers more than 280 unique sessions, ranging from the business benefits of open source to mastering complex technical challenges around management and security. The conference includes a technology lab with demonstrations of Novell's solutions, as well as those of its 60 partners sponsoring or exhibiting at the conference. Reflecting the strong industry support for Novell's platforms, platinum sponsors for the conference this year include AMD, GWAVA, HP, Intel, IBM, Messaging Architects and, for the first time ever, Microsoft.

Information and news from BrainShare, as well as photos from the event, will be posted on Novell's virtual press room page at http://www.novell.com/brainshare/press.