Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Novell chief executive Jack Messman opened the company's annual BrainShare 2005 conference with promises of further ties to the freely distributed Linux operating system.
If 2004 was the year Novell pushed its Linux and associated applications into the corporate computer server space long dominated by Microsoft's Windows, 2005 will see the company make further inroads onto the world's individual personal computers, Messman told the 6,100 conference-goers.
"Last year (at BrainShare), I told you 2004 would be the year Linux would go mainstream on the enterprise server, and that business users would begin the transition to Linux desktops. Both of these predictions have come true," he said.
He cited an IDC Research study that found revenue from servers running Linux had risen more than 38 percent from 2003-2004.
More than 3 million servers currently run Linux worldwide, and it is used on more than 10 million PCs.
"There's no doubt Linux has become a strategic business platform," Messman said.
Messman said Novell, which moved its headquarters from Utah to Waltham, Mass., last year, is changing all 6,000 of its desktops from Windows to Linux.
Messman unveiled a number of new products, including ZENworks 7, a systems management suite to allow customers to manage Windows workstations on a SuSE Linux server.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
