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“ The second generation of virtualization will lead to a much more adaptive infrastructure”
Paul Kangro,
Applied Technology Strategist,
Novell
As a company Novell has seen several ups and downs – often reinventing itself along the way as a customer-focused, market-centric entity and Fossa-lizing an interesting mix between proprietary software and open source. Paul Kangro, Applied Technology Strategist, Novell discusses the new Novell’s strategy, alliance with Microsoft, and future technology trends for CIOs in an enlightening discussion with Faiz Askari, Bureau Head, Network Computing.
What are the current priorities of enterprise CIOs?
Due to higher adoption of IT applications in the enterprise, agility has emerged as a key technology priority. However, the trends that are in turn driving the demand for agility in enterprise computing are high capacity computing, policy framework, workload automation, convergence and mobility.
How does Novell view virtualization and Virtualization 2.0?
All these trends are interconnected for the execution of agility. We see these trends as an opportunity, as open source virtualization technologies allow workloads to be executed anywhere. To express the needs of agility, policy engines provide techniques to express preferences for how workloads get executed, corporate resources remain protected, and regulatory compliance is also adhered to.
As of today, getting static virtual machines continues to be the essence of IT virtualization. Now, with the advent of a trend where technology is used more dynamically for most businesses, the priorities of an enterprise CIOs have shifted to new directions with regards to virtualization. So, the second generation of virtualization or Virtualization 2.0 will lead to a much more adaptive infrastructure.
What limitations and challenges does virtualization technology face in today’s context?
We cannot ignore those people who say that virtualization is a costly practice for disaster recovery. Virtualization offers replication of data at much higher speed. What could be done here to control the cost is to set up priorities of data replication. Virtualization 2.0 offers this feature. Novell is aggressive toward creating a single directory for various diverse applications. This is where interoperability will come into play.
‘Making IT Work as One’ is an area of focus for Novell. What do you exactly mean by this?
Today, virtualized setups have become a reality in a majority of enterprise organizations. The core issue today is to manage those virtual environments. Novell is making sincere efforts toward ‘Making IT Work as One’ by virtualization and coming out with interoperability tools to manage the existing complex infrastructure. Novell helps organizations to create a single directory of their diverse applications. Through our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, we harmoniously integrate mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one.
Along with the complexity of IT infrastructure, security challenges and compliance issues continue to multiply. Against this backdrop, customers still demand the freedom to deploy the right technology for the job and they want it all to work together. That puts even more pressure on IT managers who are tasked with managing multiple physical and virtual platforms while maximizing the value of this mixed environment. Through ‘Making IT Work as One’ we will enable our customers to meet these challenges at low cost, with reduced complexity and mitigated risk.
Additionally, through this simple statement we clearly declare our category (infrastructure software), the critical importance that our partners bring to our overall value proposition, the business driver that is our unique differentiator (interoperability or the support of mixed IT environments) and the declaration that interoperability is not just a technical goal but a human one as well (allowing people and technology to work as one).
What positioning does Novell want to create through the Fossa Project?
Key trends like high-end computing, setting up policies and adhering to them, mobility and, lastly, consolidating all these applications through convergence leads to a single demand of more agility in an IT infrastructure. For a CIO, agile IT is a simple concept. So from a CIO’s standpoint computing needs to be executed well and the IT infrastructure should help make computing easier. In an enterprise scenario, when more and more people from diverse profiles want to access the same corporate data, it becomes important to set up accurate policies while letting the data available for their access. This is where Fossa comes into play. The main agenda of the Fossa Project is to make computing easy, considering today’s growth of IT adoption and increasing dependence on IT. In this project, we are using open source software as catalysts for simplifying computing.
Regarding your alliance with Microsoft, the interoperability issue dominates it. There is also a joint development lab. What is the strategic focus of this lab?
In order to bring optimized solutions for customers, we have developed a strategic relationship with Microsoft. We have a joint development lab in Utah, USA, where nearly 85 engineers are working towards introducing some unique interoperable offerings. There are multiple focus areas for this lab, like virtualization, open source management tools and directory integration. Other areas where this lab is actively working are Open Document Format and Microsoft Office Document Format.
As we are going deeper into the interoperability aspect, we are focusing more on applications. Our plan is to provide an ecosystem of computing to make it simpler. Microsoft launched Office 2008 compatible with Open Document Format. More such announcements are going to come.
However, in an interesting step, Novell and Microsoft have even started joint sales calls to the customers. This had already started in some European countries and the US. We will be starting this joint practice soon in India as well.
Virtualization is also among the focal points of your alliance with Microsoft. Can you throw some light on this?
Yes, developing new solutions for virtualization is also one of the core objectives of our collaboration with Microsoft. These solutions will enable CIOs with the best virtualization platform for Windows server consolidation. With interoperable Novell virtualization technologies, Linux and Windows can now reside side by side, sharing the same physical servers.
Furthermore, virtualization-related flexibility extends to today's increasingly heterogeneous production environments where Linux, Windows and Unix all provide essential business services.
Is the competition between Novell and Microsoft still pervasive?
Yes. Although we have collaborated at various levels, we still compete with each other as well. For example, we compete on the desktop market. But if the customer has chosen both Linux and Windows, we collaborate to give the customer the best possible results on his investments. We refer to our relationship as ‘co-petition’ [a term coined by Novell founder Ray Noorda in the 1990s].
What importance does Novell India carry for Novell's worldwide business?
India is one of the key markets for Novell in Asia Pacific. This is evident from our recent expansion in the form of a new R&D setup that was inaugurated in Bangalore this April.
Our commitment is evident in our efforts to build up a strong team of over 1,000 professionals in India. Novell has made a significant commitment in programs, people, and facilities in India since first entering the country in 1994. Including the recent investment in the India Development Center (IDC), Novell would have invested an additional $100 million in India over the next three years.
The IDC, which has a capacity to accommodate 700 people, supports Novell’s global engineering initiatives, with primary responsibility for several award-winning Novell products and technologies, including SUSE Linux Enterprise, ZENworks identity and access management solutions, Novell Open Enterprise Server, and much more.
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