Baracus...Novell's latest Open Source Tool...

Novell announced this week that it's bringing out a new Provisioning tool.  The tool named Baracus is supposedly able to provision servers with all your favorite flavors of linux both Deb and RPM based.  It works with bear metal and the top Virutalization products.  The current release runs on either SLES or OpenSuse.  It is also currently only capable of being run from the command line.  Coming in Mid-Jan of 2011 is a REST interface which will probably mean a bunch of web interfaces by the end of next year.  The other significant part to this is that they are using Postgres for the database and claim that it will be nearly a black box.  I do have to wonder what this means for ZenWorks?  It may explain why Open Suse seems to have abandon Zenworks. 

Is Novell selling itself or just Suse Linux?

Will VMWare buy just Suse Linux or will they buy all of Novell?  There is a lot of speculation that seems to be pointing towards a buy of just SuSe Linux.  But if they do that we want to know what's left?  So for just a little bit more why not buy it all.  That's why I think buying the whole company makes more sense.  Novell owns one of the few pure closed source LDAP Servers left.  That means that for companies concerned with Open Source what should be a profitable product line for Novell or who ever buys them.  Novell has always had smart people and is always a leader where technologies are concerned.  The marriage of Novell and VMWare makes a lot of sense.  Both companies would benifit and VMWare can afford to make the deal.

Check out this article for more infor

A decenting opinion from Infoworld

General reports of the events from the Inquirer, Computer World, and Barrons

Novell offers Sun Customers Oracle Relief....

Never one to miss a chance to make the lemonade out of the lemons Novell is offering some great deals to existing Sun Customers.  The software will be free for the first year if you are migrating to the new version but all normal support costs will be in effect come next year when you renew.  The hope is that you will be a happy customer and just buy more stuff from them.

Novell could be sold....

Let the bidding war begin.  The offer today by Elliot Associates, LP will most likely not be the last we will see before a deal is made.  The best report I have seen of the story is the one on the Var Guy Website.  He has some great information here and because of the late breaking story hadn't hit the stock yet.  The offer was a dollar over today's closing price.  This is far from a done deal and the Var Guy does a pretty good run down of what I agree are the top partial players if a bidding war were to start.  Unlike other sectors of our economy in the US the Tech Companies/Sector is still flush with cash.  Most of the major players did the right thing and reduced staff and spending which has preserved their capital in the bank.  With Suse being the Number 2 Corporate Linux player it would probably be great fit for a company like HP, Computer Associates, or Oracle.  My top bet is Oracle or Computer Associates.  No matter what it will be interesting to watch and until we know who wins it's going to be hard to say what it means for Suse.