Novell grabs for big role in virtualization security

Novell tools to work across VMware, Microsoft, other virtualization platforms

Novell this week will lay out an ambitious plan to secure applications across heterogeneous virtualization platforms at customer sites and off-premises, an effort designed to play off Novell's strengths in network and identity management.

Novell's Intelligent Workload Management initiative will be designed for the creation of application workloads, described by the company as portable, self-contained units of work built through the integration of the operating system, middleware and application, to run on server virtualization products from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, among others. Under the plan, workloads will maintain security and compliance policies, along with real-time reporting and monitoring capabilities, wherever they go.

The company says it will roll out eight products over the next year to support the plan.

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Novell this week will lay out an ambitious plan to secure applications across heterogeneous virtualization platforms at customer sites and off-premises, an effort designed to play off Novell's strengths in network and identity management.

Novell's Intelligent Workload Management initiative will be designed for the creation of application workloads, described by the company as portable, self-contained units of work built through the integration of the operating system, middleware and application, to run on server virtualization products from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, among others. Under the plan, workloads will maintain security and compliance policies, along with real-time reporting and monitoring capabilities, wherever they go.

The company says it will roll out eight products over the next year to support the plan.

"It's somewhat revolutionary," said CEO Ron Hovsepian during an interview with Network World. "[In the core trends around virtualization and the cloud] what's bogging down the CIO? Security."

Desktop virtualization cheat sheet 

While Novell is taking an aggressive approach, other management vendors such as HP and IBM are also in the mix. For its part, Novell during the first quarter of next year plans to release a tool simply called Workshop that customers can use to build their workloads on Linux and Windows. Offerings following that will include the SUSE Appliance Toolkit for deploying and maintaining Linux-based appliances in physical and virtual environments for update, access and configuration.

Analysts say Novell's initiative is likely to first win adoption among the company's existing customers that are virtualizing their servers and already using products such as Novell's Identity Manager. But Novell's approach should catch the eye of non-Novell customers, too, industry watchers say.

"Today, the workload is moving around. You might shift it to New York, for instance, if your main usage is there, and traditional firewalling and identity management aren't enough anymore," says James Staten, principal analyst at Forrester. "You want something very lightweight that sets policy and identity in the application."

Novell needs its Intelligent Workload Management effort to pay off in light of falling revenue and growing losses, even as the company's Linux-based products business is on the rise (the company last week posted a fourth fiscal quarter-over-quarter revenue dip of 12% and a loss of $256 million, which swelled in large part due to acquisition and other costs).

The foundation components for security in Novell's Intelligent Workload Management initiative include capabilities available in Identity Manager 4 for real-time provisioning, reporting and management as well as the already announced Cloud Security Service, also expected to debut in 2010.

Novell today offers management products under the brands PlateSpin Workload Management and Business Management, but the company will introduce new products that integrate and extend management capabilities to the cloud.