Novell takes Xen path to Linux success

…to improve Xen, which plays to IBM's strength in selling powerful servers juggling multiple tasks.

Xen will be remain in the prototype stage at customer sites for about the next year, and early adopters should start using it the year after that, Fry predicted. That means it is likely that Novell's half-year lead over Red Hat won't give it a major benefit.

"I don't think it's a significant advantage," Frye said.

Xen will be updated significantly with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) for SLES, expected in late 2006 SP1. That version will officially support Windows, SLED 10 and SLES 9, Novell said.

With the new products, Novell is aiming to clean up its pricing, Steinman said. Breaking with its past practices, the company now charges the same for computers using x86, Power or Itanium processors, regardless of whether the system in question is a low-end single-processor machine or a behemoth with 64 dual-core processors.

For basic support levels, the cost is $349 per year. With standard support, which guarantees a call-back within four hours during the business day, the price increases to $799 a year. Priority support, with a one-hour response time around the clock, costs $1,499.

"We're trying to make Novell easy to do business with," Steinman said.

One SLES support subscription is good for as many virtual machines as a customer wants on a single computer system. That's the same virtualisation pricing policy Red Hat says it uses.

The only pricing exception is for IBM mainframe machines, where annual support prices are drastically higher: $11,999 for basic, $15,000 for standard and $18,000 for priority.

Desktop efforts
Novell has tried to challenge Microsoft's stronghold, personal computers, but hasn't made many inroads. Its aggressive rhetoric has now been replaced with a more pragmatic tone, but Novell still wants to sell its SLED 10 desktop software to business, education and government customers.

"SLED 10 is deployable for the general office worker," sending email, browsing the Web and writing memos, Steinman said. "We are not targeting SLED at the consumer."

For desktop customers, SLED 10 costs $50 per year — a price that includes the OpenOffice.org suite as well as the operating system.

Novell has followed Red Hat in preferring Gnome for its user interface (UI) software, though the KDE alternative also is available.

Steinman has no illusions that the Xgl feature — now officially called "desktop effects" — will boost worker productivity. But he believes it's better than the AIGLX technology Red Hat advocates for visual "bling", and he hopes it will draw attention to Novell.

"People see the eye candy, and they think, 'If they can deliver this on the desktop, I'm sure they can deliver it on the server as well'. It's a visual demonstration of the innovation at Novell," Steinman said. And Xgl doesn't tax computer performance, he asserted.

Among the desktop effects are "wobbly windows" that jiggle as they are dragged and bumped into other windows; an easy-zoom feature to help magnify the screen for disabled users; a three-dimensional workspace that maps different parts of a user's desktop to the facets of a cube that can be spun around; window transparency; and application switching that shows miniature versions of each program for quicker identification.

Despite their affinity for the command line, many Linux enthusiasts are also eager for a fancy user interface. But generally, such effects are something of a mismatch for the corporate market Novell is trying to reach with SLES 10, said Ovum Summit analyst Dwight Davis.

"The people most affected and impressed by glitzy UIs tend to be the consumer market, not the business market, and the consumers tend to be the ones least likely to go out and buy a Linux desktop," Davis said.

Novell also has been working to augment the OpenOffice open-source productivity software with some missing features, such as the ability to run Visual Basic macro programs and to support Microsoft Excel pivot tables (a sophisticated data sifting and presentation feature). These features are still only available in the Novell edition of OpenOffice, the company said.

Again, Davis was skeptical. "The inertia of the market, which has been comfortable with Microsoft's Office suite, if not necessarily with the pricing for it, is pretty significant," he said.

Steinman remains optimistic about the new SLED and SLES 10 products, however: "We simplified pricing, we've cleared up our product line, tightened marketing, and the salesforce is raring to go on this."