What next for Novell?

Following completion of Novell's acquisition of SuSE Linux in January, SuSE's chief executive officer, Richard Seibt, has moved up to take over Novell's European operations.

Peter Williams asked him what was next for Novell, Ximian and Linux on the desktop.

What do you see as the main thrust of Novell's European operations going forward?

Customers feel their infrastructure is too complex. We have three initiatives to tackle this.

First, reduce the number of infrastructures - consolidation - which goes with clustering on mainframes and reducing the number of proprietary operating systems like HP-UX, AIX and Windows. We can now run [applications like] SAP on Linux, and there can be huge clusters on Linux. So there are now many more applications and it's a growth path.

Second, a very important investment market is security, beginning with security management: [what] users are allowed to do where and when in applications. This must be done in a secure way. Most, if not all, development of web-based applications needs to be secure.

It's what makes chief information officers wake at three o'clock in the morning. They are concerned more and more about security.

Third is driving down the cost of systems management. This does not mean only one operating system, but managing the whole application stack, getting users on many applications working through one interface and handling such things as database capacity.

All systems management or provisioning is about reducing complexity. We all want competition, not just on Intel. We want server consolidation with the best price performance.

How do you see the merging of the Novell, SuSE and Ximian products working through?

The integration of Ximian Red Carpet and ZENworks will help customers reduce complexity, and we'll use Cambridge Tech Partners consultancy, which understands the industries and processes and how to manage the infrastructure.

There is not a big overlap between Ximian and SuSE. They're 99 per cent complementary. Users are in two camps: one camp likes [Ximian-owned] Gnome, one KDE [which SuSE supports on the desktop]. We want and need to support both.

For development, Ximian uses the SuSE Linux operating system but has some user functions [that] SuSE never did. This is leading to one desktop but supporting both [KDE and Gnome].

What kind of development platform should an independent software vendor or customer need? Open source is all about choice. It's the same with browsers: Mozilla, Opera and so on. It's not an issue.

Another example is [Novell] GroupWise and [SuSE] OpenExchange Server. OpenExchange does not have the capability for 150,000 employees, but revenue from it grew 100 per cent last year and it has similar functionality to Microsoft Exchange Server.

[Novell chief executive] Jack Messman said at LinuxWorld that Novell was aware open source had advantages, so we might even make current products open source.

What is the Linux desktop market potential?

When you look at very large customers with 100,000 or 200,000 clients you need to carefully plan a feasibility study, proof of concept, pilot, roll-out. That means years. There should not be an expectation it will [happen] tomorrow.

It takes place behind the scenes; you don't want a jet plane of executives landing in your backyard every day to see what's going on. Customers are grown up.

Can you say any more on the situation regarding SCO?

If I talk to customers, and I do every day, there simply is no impact. Now we've started the indemnification programme we have solved the copyright issue.

How is the channel progressing?

Consolidation is done, but now we need to grow revenue and profit. We are getting our business partners to support the three areas. We need to add business partners for security and identity management, and there's a huge market in the small and medium-business area.