As the IT industry continues with its massive investment in virtualisation and cloud computing its apparent that vendors are now having to develop new products to meet the demand for intelligent workload management tools. Novell to their credit saw this need a while back and has stolen a bit of a march on other vendors. Novell unveiled their strategic direction a while back around development, security, systems management and business services management.

Why?  Well virtualised systems already handle more than 15% of IT workloads and are expected to handle as much as 50% by 2012, and while cloud computing only accounts for about 3% of IT workloads today, the use of cloud computing to handle such workloads is growing 30% per year. These statistics are pretty impressive and while the use of virtualisation and cloud computing technologies is growing rapidly, IT leaders have real concerns about securing such systems and managing their performance. It therefore makes sense that Novell, are working to develop an advanced management platform that combines Novell identity management, security, and systems management products.

For building intelligent workload applications, Novell have added to its SUSE Appliance Program products a SUSE Appliance Toolkit for deploying and maintaining Linux applications in physical and virtual environments, and Novell Workshop for building Linux and Windows applications for intelligent workloads with embedded manageability, security and compliance. On the security side Novell already offers Identity Manager, Compliance Management Platform and Sentinel. Very shortly Novell (Being announced at this weeks Brainshare) will be shipping Novell Identity Manager 4 and Novell Cloud Security Service will help customers, particularly service providers, with secure intelligent workload systems.

For managing intelligent workload applications and measuring their performance Novell already has the PlateSpin workload management and managed objects business service management tools it acquired earlier last year. Also this year Novell are adding to its fairly impressive line up with self-service provisioning portal software, codenamed "PlateSpin Atlantic," and physical server change and configuration management and monitoring software currently known as "PlateSpin Bluestar." On top of this the new ZENworks "Workbench" will provide a master repository and change/control system for IT workloads.

Novell also plans to integrate its Sentinel security information and event management software with its Novell Business Service Manager to create the Novell Compliance Automation system for real-time monitoring of IT events.

New products summary (release in 2010)

Codename Atlantic: a self-service provisioning portal

Codename Bluestar: a configuration management and monitoring solution

ZENworks Workbench: a master repository and change/control system for IT workloads

SUSE Appliance Toolkit: see here

I will update shortly with further developments on the above new products or call us on 0161 906 2233 or email david.poole@salfordsoftware.co.uk