Novell has conceded that SCO's controversial Linux legal action has slowed down the adoption of the open source operating system among enterprises.

But Novell, which is putting Linux at the heart of its future strategy, insists that SCO will lose and that enterprises adopting Linux will save money.

"The cost savings for open source are clearly compelling," said Jack Messman, chairman and chief executive at Novell, at the company's Brainshare Europe conference in Barcelona.

"The SCO lawsuit has put a little cloud on the horizon and slowed things down, but most companies are going ahead with Linux in any case."

Messman added that he did not believe SCO would win its lawsuit, but that even if it did Linux could still provide cost benefits.

"If you subtract any licence fees if SCO wins, which I doubt, there's still a compelling reason to move to Linux," he said.

Messman admitted to vnunet.com that Novell still had "holes" in its Linux portfolio, but stressed that the company had no plans to buy Red Hat, SuSE or any other vendor distributing Linux.

He added that Novell would not offer to insure customers against the SCO lawsuit, because it did not offer a distribution of the operating system.