Novell Previews Workgroup Suite for SMBs

Published: June 19, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Novell last week announced yet another bundled package of its systems software, this one aimed at small and medium businesses and called Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition. This bundle follows a little more than a year after Novell announced Open Workgroup Suite, a stack of Linux software and related desktop and management programs that competes with Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and includes Novell's GroupWise groupware, which provides email, calendar, and project scheduling serving. The bundle also includes Open Enterprise Server, which is the hybrid NetWare-Linux systems software created by Novell as an upgrade path from NetWare shops but which in this case is used to manage storage on the server as well as end user accounts and authentication. The bundle also entitles buyers to punk down SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 onto end user desktops that access the server, which of course includes the OpenOffice office suite and Visual Basic macro add-ons created by Novell to make it easier for companies to move from Windows and Office to SLED 10.

As part of the Open Workgroup SBE announcement, SMB accounting software maker Intuit also announced that it was porting its QuickBooks Enterprise Edition to Linux. (Why not Quicken, Turbo Tax, and regular QuickBooks why you are at it, Intuit?) The software is not available yet, and presumably it will come out first on SLED 10 servers and SLED 10 desktops. Open Workgroup SBE will be available in September, with licenses that span up to five physical servers and up to 200 end users. Pricing information was not divulged by Novell.

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