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IBM & Novell Move on Microsoft & Red Hat
So far Linux has made its living replacing Unix. It's really only nibbled around the edges of Windows. Now IBM and Novell are teaming up to make a more concerted push into Microsoft territory with a combined IBM-Novell stack on IBM hardware. It's also a counter to Red Hat.

They call their solution the Integrated Stack for SUSE Linux Enterprise and besides the SUSE Enterprise Server it includes IBM's freebie WebSphere Application Server Community Edition and DB2 Express-C along with Centeris' Likewise Management Suite.

It's intended to sell on IBM's System x and BladeCenter servers to SMEs for file and print, web applications and databases through the channel.

Apparently they've been pre-selling the thing and claim upwards of 700 orders.

The stack is a mix of both open and proprietary source and the pair compares it to Red Hat's recently launched Application Stack - the stuff that scooped up JBoss' competitive Application Server, Hibernate and the open source databases Postgres and MySQL - observing that Red Hat offers "a pure open source solution at a higher price with less functionality and limited Windows integration."

A subscription to the Integrated Stack runs $349 for the first year.

JBoss Updates Hibernate
JBoss Monday released Hibernate 3.2, an updated version of the Java object/relational mapping software.

Apparently the thing now supports most popular development frameworks and programmers can use the Java Developer Kit (JDK) 5.0 annotations, the Java Persistence API or full Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0.

Hibernate's most significant new feature, JBoss said, is support for Java Persistence, which is supposed to make it easier to write Java EE apps using data persistence, reportedly relieving developers of 95% of common data persistence-related programming tasks compared to manually coding with SQL and the JDBC API.

Java Persistence lays the groundwork for JBoss' final EJB 3.0 implementation in the JBoss Java EE 5.0 application server, it said. Hibernate can also be used as a pluggable Java Persistence provider with any Java EE 5.0 application server.

Hibernate, licensed under the Lesser GPL, is free for the dowload and is bundled in the Red Hat Application Stack.

See http://hibernate.org.

Novell Tries New Sales Chief
Novell has made Tom Francese executive VP of worldwide sales. He also keeps his current post as president of Novell EMEA. He parachuted into Novell a year ago from IBM where he had been a VP in Blue Blue's software business. The company is counting on his partnering skills to develop an ecosystem. Sales, which have proved elusive for Novell, used to be the domain of CEO Ron Hovsepian but the ouster of Hovsepian's predecessor has had Novell playing musical chairs.

Red Hat Hires Channel Guy
Red Hat has hired Nicholas Van Wyk out of EMC for the newly created slot of VP, operations where he is supposed optimize Red Hat's subscription model and work to create a business process that supports the channel better.

At EMC Van Wyk was VP, worldwide channel operations responsible for integrating Legato's channel operations into EMC's channel software strategy. Before EMC bought Legato, Van Wyk was VP, worldwide sales operations.

Thunderbird Inherits Eudora
Eudora, the Ur-e-mail program, is going to disappear into the Mozilla Foundation's open source Thunderbird e-mail widgetry.

Qualcomm said future versions of Eudora, while retaining their feature set and productivity enhancements, will be based on the same technology platform as Thunderbird and, like Thunderbird, be free and open source. Qualcomm says Thunderbird will provide some of the key infrastructure that Eudora currently lacks such as a cross-platform code base and a "world-class" display engine. It'll also get more developers than Eudora ever had.

The last commercial version of Eudora for Mac and Windows has just come out. The first open source version of Eudora will hit the streets in the first half of next year, and when it comes out Qualcomm will stop selling it. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has cut the price 60% to $19.95, with six months of technical support good for three incidents.

Qualcomm says e-mail isn't part of its core business or strategic goals. It's not going to sell its WorldMail server any more either.

Red Hat Seeks Larger Telecoms Role
Red Hat says it's going to participate in Europe's Open Platform for User-Centric Service Creation and Execution (OPUCE), a so-called Sixth Framework Program (FP6) designed to deliver the next-generation telecommunications service delivery platform (SDP) for use across the continent.

Red Hat and JBoss Enterprise Middle Suite (JEMS) people are going to build an open source ecosystem around OPUCE, and show them how to build open source communities.

OPUCE is supposed to be heterogeneous and allow services to be accessed by multiple devices connected via different networks and makes open source central to next-generation telecom infrastructure.

Red Hat envisions JEMS becoming a core technology in the SDP market. Red Hat Linux is already carrier-grade.

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