New partnerships with server makers Dell and Egenera will be among the displays of Novell's newly bought Linux status at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, which begins on Wednesday.
Novell, whose NetWare operating system lost out to Microsoft in the server market in the 1990s, hitched its cart to a new horse with its $210m purchase of SuSE Linux this month. SuSE lags behind Linux market share leader Red Hat, but Novell is hoping its cash, customer connections and intellectual property will provide a boost.
Examples of SuSE's gradual gains include the finalisation of an expected support partnership with Dell, the last of the four major server makers to make the move. And start-up Egenera, which began its Linux server business offering only Red Hat, also will include SuSE in the fold.
IBM, which has relied on SuSE to bring Linux support to its five server lines, endorsed the acquisition with a $50m investment and believes Novell's move puts SuSE on a better footing in comparison to Red Hat.
"We think this is a very healthy thing, because it provides a good balance between the two," said Scott Handy, vice president for IBM's Linux strategy and market development.
There's still work to be done, though. Dell is on board, so customers in Europe, where SuSE is most popular, will have better support, but "Red Hat is still our major partner for Linux," spokeswoman Carmen Maverick said.
Software companies also are cutting deals with Novell. Veritas will announce it's selling SuSE versions of its software for storage management and server availability, and mainframe specialist Compuware and Web server power BEA Systems also are expected to announce Novell partnerships.
It's no surprise that established members of the computing industry are solidifying their Linux products. Linux server sales of nearly $3bn in 2003 are expected to rise to nearly $9bn by 2007, according to market researcher IDC. Over the same period, IDC believes Linux server shipments will increase from about 800,000 to about 2.5 million.
In other news, at its opening keynote speech by chief executive Jack Messman, Novell also plans to announce membership in established open-source groups -- the Eclipse programming tools consortium begun by IBM is a likely candidate -- and new security certifications in conjunction with IBM.
LinuxWorld is the premier show for the Linux technology industry; its August 2003 incarnation in San Francisco drew more than 11,000 attendees, according to organiser IDG World Expo.
"Our objective is to meet a lot of potential customers. Also while you're there, you end up setting up a lot of business partner meetings as well as analyst meetings," said Ranajit Nevatia, director of Linux strategy at Veritas Software, which stands to profit as Linux makes the move from lower-end servers handling basic tasks to higher-end machines with more sophisticated duties.
