Novell continues to make inroads into providing identity management solutions for federal agencies looking to comply with HSPD-12 mandates. HSPD-12 or Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, establishes a government-wide standard for identification credentials (or smart cards) that deliver a common, two-factor authentication method for accessing physical and logical assets.

Last week, Novell began shipping SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 for running high-performance, time-sensitive applications, and apparently Red Hat is feeling a bit threatened.

Novell laid off 250 workers in the United States as part of an ongoing restructuring program to slash costs, company spokesman Bruce Lowry said Friday.

Novell today announced that the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition is now available to customers worldwide. A Linux-based desktop-to-server solution tailored to meet the needs of small businesses, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition combines the flexibility and cost efficiency of open source software with the support of an established enterprise software vendor. The new suite provides small businesses with productivity tools and a networking infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of alternative, proprietary-only software bundles.

Novell today announced that Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 is now available to customers worldwide. Open Enterprise Server 2 features full 64-bit support of software services previously only found on NetWare, along with storage management enhancements and NetWare virtualization.

Novell announced significant enhancements in the performance of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server when the Linux operating system is running as a virtual machine guest in a VMware environment. To deliver this improved performance, Novell modified the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel to support the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor that simplifies the task of virtualization and makes Linux a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments.

Microsoft Corp. and Novell today announced the opening of the Microsoft and Novell Interoperability Lab in Cambridge, Mass. Announced last fall as part of Microsoft and Novell's groundbreaking collaboration agreement, the opening of the lab delivers on a promise the two companies made to work together to create a joint development facility at which Microsoft and Novell technical experts will design and test new software solutions and work with customers and the community to build and support technologies that allow Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise to work well together.

Sliverlight for Linux? Not so fast. You’ll need to pay some ‘Microsoft tax’ first, for protection from Novell — a ‘protection’ that expires within about 4 years.

Novell today announced it has been positioned in the leaders quadrant of Gartner, Inc.'s, "Magic Quadrant for User Provisioning, 2H07" by Earl Perkins and Roberta J. Witty, August 23, 2007. Novell Identity Manager, the company's user-provisioning solution, helps customers reduce deployment and administration costs, simplify complex provisioning, manage user roles more securely and maintain compliance with industry regulations.

Novell, Inc. announced financial results for its third fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2007. For the quarter, Novell reported net revenue of $243 million, compared to net revenue of $236 million for the third fiscal quarter 2006. The loss from operations for the third fiscal quarter 2007 was $10 million, compared to a loss from operations of $40 million for the third fiscal quarter 2006.

Applications is just one of several areas where Linux needs to progress, said Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. Virtualization and data center management are key, he argued, and Linux should take advantage of the virtualization support chipmakers are embedding in their products.

Acronis, Inc., a technological leader in storage management software, announced it is a Silver Technology Partner with Novell and is committed to the development and delivery of technology solutions, services and offerings that support SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell.

"Novell is committed to providing the best engineered, best supported and most interoperable Linux distribution for our customers. Customers can remain confident deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server under the Novell–Microsoft agreement. Nothing in the final version of GPLv3 prevents us from maintaining that promise. For us, it’s business as usual."

Novell today announced new enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and unveiled new partnerships that expand the ecosystem around Novell's low latency Linux solution. SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time, the only enterprise-class, open source real-time operating system offered by an enterprise Linux distributor today, is a high performance, customizable, fully supported solution for running mission-critical applications that require deterministic processing and speed.

Novell today announced that the first service pack (SP1) for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is now available to customers worldwide.