Novell has introduced a programme to help software companies
develop and sell appliances running Suse Linux.
The Suse
Appliance Program is designed to help independent software
providers package and distribute their software on Suse Linux.
Markus Rex, senior vice-president and general manager of Novell
Open Platform Solutions, said, "Novell has taken all of our
knowledge about how to build and customise an operating system and
captured it for ISVs in one unique program. ISVs don't need to be
experts in Linux distributions to build their own solutions.
Instead, they are now free to focus on what they do best - create a
better software experience for their customers."
Novell is including Suse Studio Online, a web-based appliance
building tool, Suse Linux Enterprise JeOS (Just Enough Operating
System), and support for Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 deployed
on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), within the
programme.
The Suse Appliance Program could benefit end-user businesses,
according to analyst house IDC. "Software appliances are the next
evolutionary step for software packaging, allowing hardware to be
decoupled from the software, and creating more flexibility for
deployment and management," said Al Gillen, Program vice-president,
System Software at IDC.
"Businesses are looking for simplified ways to deploy their
applications, and this emerging form factor can not only directly
leverage the increasingly virtualised infrastructure that customers
have today in their data centres, it is capable of deployment to
cloud computing environments, too. We believe that software
appliances will also help reduce support costs and sales cycle
times for ISVs, making the concept attractive for vendors and end
users alike," said Al Gillen.