Novell and allies forge bonds in creating products to rival Microsoft's

Novell Inc. is forging stronger bonds with a couple of other giant allies as they develop Linux products to battle Microsoft Corp.

Officials from Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines Corp. spoke Wednesday of strengthened relationships with Massachusetts-based Novell during Novell's weeklong BrainShare conference at the Salt Palace.

Martin Fink, vice president of Linux at HP, said Linux has many attributes working in its favor and complimented Novell's commitment to the open-source computer operating system. That commitment has included acquiring software developer Ximian Inc. and Linux distributor SuSE Linux.

"It was pretty impressive to see the process and due diligence Novell went through to say, 'We need to acknowledge this phenomenon in the marketplace, and not only do we need to acknowledge it, we need to get behind it and participate in it,' " Fink said.

"It's been a pretty powerful thing. . . . So then what you do is combine the power of HP and Novell and HP and SuSE, which Novell just acquired, and you get a pretty exciting combination."

Novell, with about 2,000 workers in Provo, and HP will extend their agreements, with HP certifying, testing and supporting the Novell SuSE Linux operating system "on a pretty complete range of desktops and laptops going forward," he said.

SuSE Linux will become HP's standard Linux distribution across its portfolio of business desktop and notebook PCs in North America, with Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific countries added later.

"When you start thinking about the ability to say, 'I want to deploy one platform, one consistent environment, have one set of training, one vendor, one pat on the back, and I can do it on the laptop through to the data center on Linux,' that is really, really cool," Fink said.

Jim Stallings, general manager of Linux for IBM, described the Novell/IBM connection as "a growing relationship that's very, very close."

IBM last fall said it would invest $50 million in Novell, and the companies said Wednesday that IBM will buy some Novell preferred shares that are convertible into 8 million shares of Novell common stock, at a price of $6.25 per share.

The two companies will extend existing agreements for Linux development and promotion. One will enable IBM to ship SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, which customers license from Novell, across IBM's entire server line.