March 2nd, 2009
Novell delivers PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 and lives up to promises
Novell has always offered excellent technology focused on resolving real business challenges. Since the company wanted to be the “glue” that tied Windows, UNIX and Linux workloads together to create a managable, secure environment, they’ve often been “the wiring in the wall” that many didn’t recognize. A while ago, Novell’s Richard Whitehead and I spoke about the upcoming release and rebranding of Novell’s Orchestrator, now Novell PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0. (see Novell updates PlateSpin and rebrands Orchestrator to refresh your memory). This time the good Mr. Whitehead’s “people” contacted me again to discuss the actual product release.
Did Novell live up to its promises?
It’s clear that Novell did its best to live up to the promises it made back in December 2008. The released product certainly appears to offer the capability and features that were promised.
The company has done its level best to support open standards and open delivery models. Novell has continued to focus on supporting heterogenious environments that contain multiple hardware platforms, multiple operating systems and now mutliple virtualization technologies. The goal is making the increasingly complex virtual world simple to understand and manage
Snapshot analysis
I’ve watched Novell for quite some time and have always been impressed with the technology their industrial sorcerers have been able to produce. I’ve also been impressed with their ability to hide that magic behind a bland, largely technical set of messages that, while true, didn’t get the attention of decision makers, lead them to become interested enough in what Novell could do for their organization to take action. After all, if someone isn’t aware of a product or service, they won’t consider it and if they don’t consider it, they are not going to purchase it.
Novell has taken some controversial actions to assure it could provide powerful, interoperable solutions. Novell’s ability to support virtualized environments based upon hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware and members of the open source world come directly out of agreements with Microsoft, collaboration with the Xen community as well as input from companies of all sizes.
Novell clearly understands a number of very important concepts including the following.
- that virtualization is far more than merely using virtual machine technology,
- datacenters are complex, multi-platform, multi-vendor worlds that depend upon many types of technology working together in harmony
- to be a real business asset, technology must be manageable, secure and reliable
Since there are many suppliers offering orchestration and automation software, however, Novell is going to be challenged to cut through the noise and help decision makers learn about Novell and its products. That being said, I would suggest that IT decision makers take the time to learn more about what Novell is doing.
Daniel Kusnetzky is a member of the senior management team of The 451 Group. He is responsible for research and publications on a broad array of technology topics. He examines emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, research and development issues, and end-user integration requirements. You can follow Dan on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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