Breaking News--Novell Delivers Workgroup Software Bundle for SMBs

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Novell Delivers Workgroup Software Bundle for SMBs

Published: October 16, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial Linux distributor Novell today completed the revamping of its server operating systems with the delivery of a bundle of its operating systems for servers and desktops plus groupware and office automation software. The bundle, called Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition, is a kicker to a similar stack that was announced by Novell back in June 2006 and that has been one of the big reasons why Novell's NetWare sales have not slid as far as many--including Novell--had predicted.

The slowing pace of the decline in NetWare sales is, perhaps, just a function of the way Novell is packaging software and how it delineates sales. Like Open Enterprise Server, Novell's hybrid SUSE Linux-NetWare platform, Open Workgroup Suite is a mix of the Linux operating system and NetWare services and given that NetWare is no longer the underpinning of Open Enterprise Server--but rather SUSE Linux is, and more precisely, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2--you could just as well call it Linux and be done with it. The larger point--and the one that matters--is that for whatever reason, Open Workgroup Suite has been selling fairly well and is helping Novell make the transition from NetWare to Linux a little more gracefully than it might otherwise be doing.

Open WorkGroup Suite Small Business Edition includes SLES 10 SP2 as implemented inside Open Enterprise Server 2, the hybrid Linux-NetWare platform that Novell just started shipping last week. The stack includes Novell's GroupWise email, calendaring, and task management software and uses OES 2 and its NetWare services for file and print serving as well as for management. Applications are intended to run atop Linux, not NetWare, with Open Workgroup Suite, but given the fact that OES 2 includes a NetWare 6.5 license and also has an integrated Xen hypervisor that allows virtualized NetWare instances to run inside Linux, the distinction is moot. The bundle also includes the latest updates of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED 10) desktop variant and the variant of OpenOffice that Novell has tweaked to better support Visual Basic scripts used in Windows environments from within Linux.

Because SMB customers are not always eager to pay a lot of money for software, with this update of Open Workgroup Suite Novell is tossing in a bunch of other system software goodies, including the Amanda program for backup and archiving (and supplementing the sophisticated storage management software inside OES 2), the ClamAV antivirus scanner, the HylaFax fax server, the IPTables firewall, the MailScanner spam filter, the OpenVPN virtual private network server, and the TightVNC for remotely monitoring and controlling SLED clients. Any program that is certified to run on SLES 10 SP2 will obviously also run on Open Workgroup Suite.

Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition costs $350 for a single server with five users activated. Because Novell wants larger customers to buy the full and unbundled versions of OES 2, GroupWise, and SLED 10, Novell limits Open Workgroup Suite to a maximum of 200 users per company and a maximum of five servers within that company. This pricing is a lot less complex than with the prior Open Workgroup Suite, which had a cost of $80 to $150 per seat plus maintenance fees.