Novell Announces Significant ISV Support for SUSE Appliance Program

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are demonstrating tremendous support for the SUSE® Appliance Program from Novell, the industry's first, complete, end-to-end appliance solution that enables ISVs to rapidly build, update, configure and go to market with fully supported software and virtual appliances. These ISVs are taking advantage of the comprehensive go-to-market support for appliances offered by Novell, including distribution channel, joint marketing, pricing, and redistribution agreements that reduce the time to get an evaluation or production appliance ready for the market.

"Market trends such as cloud computing are revolutionizing the way businesses package, distribute and utilize software," said John Dragoon, Channel chief and chief marketing officer at Novell. "Software appliances provide an ideal platform for independent software vendors in their pursuit of new markets and business models. Novell is responding to this opportunity by delivering the first fully supported, complete technical and marketing solution to help our ISV partners simplify appliance creation, reduce development and support costs, and enter new markets."

Built on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, the SUSE Appliance Program consists of a comprehensive program and group of technologies that enable ISVs to quickly deliver existing applications to physical, virtual and cloud computing environments, reduce sales cycles and pursue new market opportunities. See today's related announcement at www.novell.com/suseappliancepresskit.

The SUSE Appliance Program is designed to help ISVs significantly expand their routes to market. A key component of the program is a new partnership with Tech Data Corporation, which enables ISVs to market their appliances through the Tech Data network of value-added resellers.

"In addition to the SUSE Appliance Program helping ISVs more efficiently deliver their software applications, we see tremendous opportunity for VARs as well," said Stacy Nethercoat, vice president, Software Product Marketing at IT products distributor Tech Data Corporation. "VARs can provide this solution to end-user customers with in-house software development teams, enabling them to more efficiently deploy and manage applications enterprise-wide. Tech Data has teamed with Novell to train our software licensing specialists, who are ready to help VARs and ISVs take full advantage of the SUSE Appliance Program."

ISVs Voice Support for the SUSE Appliance Program
There are more than 3,800 ISV applications currently certified on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform. Many of these ISVs will be joining the SUSE Appliance Program to offer their application as an appliance. Some of the early members of the SUSE Appliance Program are:

Adobe

"With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Adobe is able to further expand support for our technical field and strategic partners who are leveraging Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite to build world-class customer solutions," said Alex Choy, vice president for LiveCycle engineering at Adobe. "By providing pre-configured Linux-based virtual appliances, we effectively lower the barrier for potential customers to evaluate our software. In addition, we can also enable our field and partners to quickly create custom proofs that demonstrate the technology and value to our customers. Adobe is always seeking new ways to deliver our technology in a more streamlined and cost-effective manner, and we see the SUSE Appliance Program as an important component to our continuing success."

Bitrock
"SUSE Studio from Novell has allowed us to efficiently create and manage virtual appliances for over 20 different open source applications at our BitNami.org website," said Erica Brescia, CEO at BitRock. "Integration with our automated build and test system enables BitRock Custom Stack clients to benefit from an additional deployment option."

Codice Software
"Codice Software develops Plastic SCM, a software configuration management system for companies facing distributed and parallel development," said Pablo Santos, CEO, Codice Software. "Plastic SCM makes extensive use of Novell technology, including both SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Now appliances open up new ways to reduce the already short server set up, giving us the ability to install corporate Plastic SCM server networks in seconds."

Four J's Development Tools
"I think there is a great opportunity for aggressive, pioneering software vendors looking to disrupt the way business applications are delivered today," said Jean-Georges Schwartz, CEO at Four J's Development Tools. "Using our Genero to rapidly generate the application and SUSE Studio from Novell to create the cloud appliance with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, our customers can transform their business model 'overnight' and open up new markets that before seemed unattainable. For that, I couldn't think of a more powerful combination than our products and the SUSE Appliance Program."

HP
"In today's economy, customers want to accelerate deployment of business services that increase their competitive advantage, but at a lower overall cost to the business. With the HP Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio, we deliver a business-ready technology infrastructure that rapidly grows and changes with the needs of the business while reducing costs," said Paul Miller, vice president, Marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. The synergy of the SUSE Appliance Program from Novell with HP Adaptive Infrastructure will simplify deployment and support, in addition to achieving customer objectives at a reduced cost."

IBM
"Software appliances can help simplify IT for small and medium businesses, helping them to focus on their customers while saving money," said Bob Sutor, vice president Open Source and Linux of IBM Software. "We think easy to use and deploy software appliances such as Lotus Foundations built on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and IBM software present compelling sales opportunities for our business partners. We're excited to explore extending our work with Novell in the appliance space."

Infobright
"Infobright's mission is to deliver a simple, easy to use and powerful data warehouse solution that can be immediately downloaded and deployed by users," said Bob Zurek, CTO at Infobright. "SUSE Studio takes this to the next level by making it simple to create a virtual appliance that can be deployed anywhere the user wants - whether it's on the user's premises or in the cloud."

Ingres
"At Ingres, we believe that innovation in software packaging can reduce staffing costs and accelerate the delivery of value. We see the SUSE Appliance Program as an excellent way for ISVs to reduce costs by delivering their applications with an open source infrastructure that is proven for critical applications," said Roger Burkhardt, CEO at Ingres. "Our experience with our ISV partners has been that software appliances using Ingres Database can reduce infrastructure staffing costs by as much as 70 percent and also radically accelerate their delivery of innovative open source solutions. We wholeheartedly support this initiative by Novell."

Messaging Architects
"For close to five years, Messaging Architects has depended on SUSE Linux Enterprise as the foundation for our M+Guardian product," said Pierre Chamberland, Founder and CEO at Messaging Architects. "Hundreds of SUSE Linux Enterprise-based appliances are already in use by our clients, running in over 40 countries worldwide, delivering an incredible 99.99 percent uptime. The SUSE Appliance Program will enable us to dramatically increase the number of configurations we offer and the target markets we can address. Novell's goal of providing a secure and scalable Linux distribution, from the desktop to the data center, means we can now deliver our email infrastructure solutions on everything from Netbooks to high-capacity blade servers and even mainframe computers. Using the tools from the SUSE Appliance Program, we will be able to rapidly deliver the perfect combination of fit and functionality while making the overall purchasing experience incredibly simple and the subsequent deployment completely risk-free."

Packet General
"Software appliances provide an excellent means of delivering a complete and secure application stack," said Raj Sharma, CEO at Packet General. "PCI-GENERAL, an appliance for MySQL, is a prime example of such a concept. The appliance transparently encrypts MySQL data, controls access and provides key management. This way, MySQL customers don't have to look for point solutions to fulfill their PCI compliance needs. SUSE Enterprise Linux provides the secure foundation upon which we deliver our data security and PCI compliance solutions."

Quest Software
"Quest customers run some of the busiest Web sites on the Internet and expect nothing less than fast and reliable performance when they deploy our Foglight® user experience monitoring tools," said John Spirko, application management product management director at Quest Software. "Our Foglight appliance is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, providing the best option for our customers, from reliability and superior support to the unmatched speed and throughput required to meet high-volume traffic. SUSE Appliance Program's increased performance, deployment flexibility and value has helped us expand our market opportunity and empower our customers to deliver a superior application end user experience - which is important to everyone's bottom line."

SAP
"Our customers are looking increasingly to new ways to create scalable, high-performance business applications," said Stefan Sigg, senior vice president, SAP NetWeaver Technology, SAP. "Teaming with Novell and offering our customers SAP applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise meets direct customer needs, providing high-value, low-complexity solutions to pressing challenges such as regulatory requirements and optimizing applications in appliances and virtual environments. The SUSE Appliance Program marks another step forward in our joint support of standards-based computing."

Sonoa Systems, Inc.
"Enterprises increasingly expect the choice to deploy technology either as on-premise or on-demand solutions - or even in combinations of both for emerging cloud computing scenarios," said Chet Kapoor, CEO at Sonoa. "This gives us the flexibility to offer the same API management technology seamlessly - however the customer wants it - whether it's hardware appliances, virtual software appliances, or on-demand."

VMware
"VMware is helping thousands of enterprises do more with less by reducing complexity, improving the manageability of data centers and reducing capital and operating costs," said Brian Byun, vice president, global partners and corporate development. "VMware is pleased to work with Novell's SUSE Appliance Program to help software vendors package their software in fast time to value virtual appliances. Both companies have invested in optimizing the performance, scalability and security of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in VMware virtual machines to support virtual appliances as well as mission-critical application landscapes such as SAP."

Zmanda
"Zmanda continues to make enterprise-level backup radically simple for IT managers," said Chander Kant, CEO of Zmanda. "Shipping a pre-packaged backup appliance is an excellent next step in this process. We are very excited about bringing Zmanda Backup Appliance to the market which will run on either on-premises virtual infrastructure or the Cloud. SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS provides an excellent foundation for our appliance."