Good news for Novell Linux

It hasn’t all been bad news for Novell this month. While it was too late to be included in the fourth-quarter results we talked about last week, the company did get a big win from the middle of Europe. As reported in the Salt Lake Tribune, the Swiss government has contracted Novell to replace 3,000 servers with SuSE Enterprise Linux. That is a major gain for Novell and should help improve the bottom line significantly in the current fiscal year’s first quarter.

Unfortunately, the news story repeated the canard that the recent purchase of licenses from Novell by the U.K.’s National Health Service was a “$39 million Linux-related deal.” It was only Linux-related in that Open Enterprise Server (OES) does ship with an optional Linux kernel. The bulk of the sale, however, hinged on ZENworks and Novell Identity Manager. It was an impressive sale, but it had little to do with Linux.

One move that did have everything to do with Linux, though, was an announcement out of IBM. As a story in Network World reported, Novell had “joined the likes of SAP and Cisco as [one of] the top-10 partners in IBM’s highest level of partnership, its strategic alliance program.” IBM stated that it would even be building a special, dedicated sales team to focus on selling Linux subscriptions. The news was tempered by the fact that Red Hat would garner the same benefits from IBM as Novell, but the company could be optimistic as, according to the news story,  “IBM continues to take an even-handed approach toward the two Linux players despite Red Hat outselling Novell.”

In case you missed it, the best headline for this announcement came courtesy of the U.K.’s irreverent rag, The Register: “IBM in Linux distro love-in. Novell and Red Hat snuggle up to Big Blue.”

*** FLASH! You can win prizes from Novell!

Yes, just as we were going to press I got a note from Ted (“The Rev”) Haeger announcing a new contest with real prizes. It’s the “Design a new logo for NUI” contest. That’s NUI, Novell Users International (formerly NetWare Users International. Formerly the International NetWare Users Group. Times change).

Get all the details from the NUI Web site but hurry, the entry deadline is Jan. 1! What can you win?  How about:

* The first 15 people who submit designs will receive a free t-shirt.

* The four finalists will each receive a 4GB iPod Nano and the most recent version of SuSE Linux 10.

* The winner will receive a pass to BrainShare SLC 2006 ($1,595 value), which will include a five-night hotel stay (flight not included) and a 60GB video iPod.

That’s right, T-shirts! Just for drawing a picture. Get to work and enter now.