"A recent survey conducted by IDC and sponsored by Novell confirmed that around 50 percent of IT executives are planning to increase their adoption of Linux server and desktop technologies this year because of the economic downturn," said Jeff Jaffe, chief technology officer at Novell. "With the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, Novell is helping IT professionals save money while addressing other key issues identified in the survey, such as interoperability, support for mission-critical computing and the flexibility to deploy Linux in a wide range of environments."
According to Novell, the platform contains major enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and delivers two new extensions -- SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, the only product that enables customers to run fully supported Microsoft* .NET-based applications on Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, a clustering product that ensures uptime for mission-critical applications while slashing the cost of ownership for high availability.
"As virtualization realizes its full potential and cloud computing begins to transform the data center, operating systems need to be engineered to enable these new solutions," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president at IDC. "By fully supporting physical, virtual, appliance and cloud computing models with SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell can help customers at each step in the evolution of the data center. For customers seeking an operating system that works with their existing IT infrastructure while reducing the cost of enterprise computing, Novell has delivered SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 and a comprehensive set of solutions for identity, security and systems management."
As part of a complete solution, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will be supported by Novell's global strategic partners -- including Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle and SAP AG -- and its entire ecosystem of solution, integration, hardware and software partners. Together, Novell with its partners deliver the world-class implementation, technical support and training services customers have come to expect. Novell has also invested significant resources in building an expansive independent software vendor application catalog for SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Novell is also announcing Wednesday the availability of Novell ZENworks Linux Management 7.3, which extends policy-driven automation to SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Managing both desktop and server systems, ZENworks Linux Management makes it easy to deploy, manage and maintain Linux resources with advanced policies for desktops and servers. When used with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, ZENworks Linux Management enables customers to reduce the time and cost spent managing their IT infrastructure.
For deploying Linux in the cloud, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will be certified and supported in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Novell is collaborating with IBM to deliver SUSE Linux Enterprise 11-based virtual instances of IBM DB2*, Informix* Dynamic Server, WebSphere* sMash, IBM Lotus* Web Content Management and IBM WebSphere* Portal instances for cloud environments. Currently, customers deploying Linux desktops have been able to obtain SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop preloaded from leading hardware vendors, including Dell and HP. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, Novell will continue to bring desktop Linux ubiquity to the market across a variety of devices, including desktops, notebooks, netbooks, nettops and thin clients.
Later this year, Novell plans to release the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, which will leverage the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 code base to reduce latency and increase predictability and reliability of time-sensitive, mission-critical applications.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension and Novell ZENworks Linux Management 7.3 are available now. SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS will be available in April and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension will be available in the second quarter of this year. Later in 2009, Novell plans to release updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension and SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client.