Novell has begun shipping its Open Enterprise Server 2 Linux platform to customers worldwide.

The firm claims that the offering delivers workgroup services entirely on Linux.

The platform features 64-bit support for software services previously found only on NetWare, along with storage management enhancements and NetWare virtualisation.

Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Novell, emphasised the platform's support for existing NetWare users.

"Our current NetWare customers can choose to run NetWare in para-virtualised mode on Linux to take full advantage of the latest hardware, while maintaining their current NetWare environment and preferences as they move to Linux," he said.

The platform also offers dynamic storage technology from Novell that uses customer-defined policies to recognise active and stale data and automatically shift it to the appropriate storage device as the data's status changes.

Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 is available now as a standalone product and will be part of the Novell Open Workgroup Suite within 30 days.