A Novell BrainShare debriefing

Low-key. That's how I'd sum up Novell' s annual BrainShare conference, which I attended two weeks ago.

I've been to 15 of these events (since before it was called BrainShare), but the most recent was only my first in three years. I found the keynote addresses to be particularly ho-hum compared with those I've seen in the past. Jack Messman and the governor of Utah were no match for earlier stemwinders I'd seen from Novell's own Ray Noorda and Drew Major, as well as outsiders such as Apple's Steve Jobs, Oracle's Larry Ellison and even Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.

Part of it, of course, was that there were no major new announcements. All of those had come either two weeks before at Europe's CeBIT or last month's LinuxWorld events.

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Low-key. That's how I'd sum up Novell' s annual BrainShare conference, which I attended two weeks ago.

I've been to 15 of these events (since before it was called BrainShare), but the most recent was only my first in three years. I found the keynote addresses to be particularly ho-hum compared with those I've seen in the past. Jack Messman and the governor of Utah were no match for earlier stemwinders I'd seen from Novell's own Ray Noorda and Drew Major, as well as outsiders such as Apple's Steve Jobs, Oracle's Larry Ellison and even Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.

Part of it, of course, was that there were no major new announcements. All of those had come either two weeks before at Europe's CeBIT or last month's LinuxWorld events.

The mood was also a reflection of Messman's personality, as I noted in one of my Novell NetWare Tips newsletter last week . He wants you to know who's in charge, though he lacks charisma, at least on the stage.

But sober reflection leads me to believe that something else, something more subtle, something that perhaps new Marketing Vice President Bill Hewitt thought up, could have been the genesis of the almost somber week.

Novell is all about Linux and open source these days. Business, in general, dislikes the passionate nature of the open source movement (while continuing to use its products) and the almost religious fervor that leaders of open source show when let out in public.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s talk could be seen as a typical "move your business to my state" speech often delivered to Chamber of Commerce audiences. Messman's could be viewed as a no-nonsense talk to shareholders defining and defending the company's actions. In both cases, they contributed to an impression that Linux is already mainstream, Linux is ready to run enterprise networks - Linux is not only better for your bottom line, but will give your company an edge.

The two thrusts of the Linux message were about the new Linux Small Business Suite and the new Linux Datacenter packages.

But perhaps the theme really was that Linux has grown up. Since it was just two years ago at BrainShare that Messman referred to Linux as an "immature operating system," there's a certain poetic elegance to now treating it as ready to run the Fortune 50. Novell just might have a rosy future.

Tip of the week

Also at BrainShare, Novell showed its upcoming Netware client for Linux, which should be available late next month. It’s been a long time coming but it should do for desktops what Open Enterprise Server does for NetWare servers - ease the transition to Linux.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.